


Just In Case

by Beguile



Category: Daredevil (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Ableist Language, Airborne Pineapples Real and Imagined, Angst, Attempts at Best Friendicide, Best Damn Avocadoes at Law, Blasphemy, Child Death, Depression, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Evil Devil Muppet, Ex-Girlfriend, Exhaustion, Feels, Flu, Fluff, Foggy Gets His Ass Kicked, Foggy Kicks Ass, Friendship, Head Injury, Hospitals, Hugging, Humour, Hurt/Comfort, Lying...Badly, MCU References, Matt Gets Lost, Mild Language, More Feels, Nightmares, One-Shots, Open Manholes, Prompts Welcome, Rating May Change, Sensory Deprivation, Sickfic, Some suicidal thoughts, Spoilers for Full Metal Jacket (of all things), Surgery, Things They Will Never Speak of Again, Touch, college-era, face-touching, hearing impairment, nervous breakdown, pop culture references, sidekickery, some gore, viral videos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-11
Updated: 2016-04-24
Packaged: 2018-03-30 00:25:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 25
Words: 84,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3916291
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beguile/pseuds/Beguile
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Matt is going to get his ass kicked.  Foggy puts together a bag for when – not if – that happens.  A series of hurt/comfort fics.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Just In Case

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: the characters and concepts in this story are the property of Marvel and their related affiliates. This is an amateur writing effort meant for entertainment purposes only. 
> 
> I had the idea for several one shots, but they all ended up being tied together by a common thread – my heartbreak at Foggy walking out of Matt’s apartment at the end of “Nelson vs. Murdock”. Much as I think Foggy was justified, I just like it better when the best damn avocadoes at law are together. The result was tying these fics together by a common thread and posting them all in one spot. 
> 
> I’m also spending a lot of time in my own head lately. Citizens of Cyberland, help me! I’m looking for suggestions, prompts, and challenges. Let me know what you would like to read. 
> 
> Cue a short intro, prepped for updates soon!

* * *

 

Just In Case

 

Okay, so much as Foggy trusts Matt, he also trusts that Matt is going to get his ass kicked.  In fact, he probably trusts Matt’s ability to get his ass kicked more, because while Matt might have been able to lie throughout his friendship with Foggy, Matt’s body doesn’t lie.  Matt’s body speaks every ass kicking with an honesty that Foggy feels a little sick just thinking about.

            And he just gets sicker when he thinks about all the times he brushed off Matt’s more serious injuries as clumsy accidents instead of attempts at Best-Friend-icide by the criminal element in Hell’s Kitchen or when he used the fallout from Matt's fight with a ninja and a criminal kingpin to launch a debate about being a good friend. 

            (Although to be fair, Matt deserved that.  Maybe just not right after waking up from almost dying.)

            So the next time Foggy gets the call late at night/early in the morning on the burner cell Matt gave him “just in case” – “…you get your ass kicked,” Foggy had added, which earned a laugh from Matt because that was precisely the case for which the cell phone was assigned – Foggy isn’t surprised.  Foggy isn’t even unnerved. 

            Foggy is prepared.

            He scoops up some clothes from his floordrobe and grabs the duffel he made up for exactly a night like this, the duffel he assembled for another long vigil at his friend’s house.  No beer or regret or betrayal here: no, Foggy carries only the essentials.  He has an extra blanket, a change of clothes, a toothbrush.  He picked up a few groceries, quintessential recovery items like water, ginger ale, juice, and soup.  There’s a small first aid kid with clean bandages, tape, steri-strips, saline, ice packs, and he even scored some sort-of, not-really, almost-but-not-quite legal painkillers from his pharmacy tech cousin in case Matt decides it’s way cooler to not be in pain for a couple hours than be Matt Murdock.

            He’s got other stuff too: some work, his computer, a few movies (for which Foggy has described video covered, because he’s way better than the industry types at narrating the action), and some other stuff he threw in “just in case” – “…I need to stop you from doing anything crazy while you recover,” he’ll tell Matt. 

            Then he hops in a cab and ends up at Matt’s door. 

 

* * *

 

TBC.

Happy reading!


	2. ...of Shattered Glass

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: the characters and concepts in this story are the property of Marvel and their related affiliates. This is an amateur writing effort meant for entertainment purposes only.
> 
> Thank you for the responses to the first chapter! I hope this is a good first installment. Special thanks to the ticking clock who provided the prompt for this chapter. Please enjoy, readers!

* * *

 

…Of Shattered Glass

 

            All that waiting for a call, and the first words out of Foggy’s mouth are, “Why the hell didn’t you call Claire?”   
  
            Matt laugh-winces-groans all in the same breath, in pain but not ready to admit that he’s in pain.  “That bad, huh?”

            “It’s worse than that bad!” and that’s saying something.  Foggy’s eyes are still adjusting to the light in Matt’s apartment.  What looks to be a mess of glittering red on Matt’s shoulder could actually be…no, no, that’s actually what it is.  In fact, being able to see it better only makes the wound look worse.  Foggy has to correct himself, “It’s worse than that too!”   
  
            “Guy hit me with a bottle,” Matt actually makes the motion of brushing aside Foggy’s concern in the air. 

            As if that makes it o-kay.

            As if that makes it all better.

            As if that makes the wound just disappear.

            “And you didn’t call Claire because, let me guess: you used up all your good judgment getting hit in the shoulder with a bottle?”

            “Claire’s out of town.”

            “Well, I’ll text her a picture of this.  That should bring her back in town.”   
            “Foggy, Foggy, Foggy…” Matt’s hand is a blur in the air from shaking so badly.  “It’s fine.  There’s not a lot of glass in the wound.”   
            “There’s still glass in there?!”

            “Not a lot of it.  A few shards, that’s all.  You’re going to have to…you’re going to have to abrade the skin, coax them out.  I won’t even need stitches when it’s over.  Just some antiseptic and clean dressings.”   
  
            “Have you seen yourself?  Sorry, dumb question.  But if you could, you would know that you are gray right now.  There are corpses – bloated, rotting, three day old corpses at the bottom of the East River right now – that look better than you.”

            “They probably feel better than me too right now,” Matt musters a laugh.  “I trust you, Foggy.  I know you can do this.”

            “You’re just saying that because I’m the only one you have to call.”   
  
            “That doesn’t hurt either.  This does.  I can guide you through it a little.  I think I can focus well enough to find most of what you’re looking for.”

            “Wonderful.  That almost makes me feel confident,” Foggy drops his duffel bag.  He rips the first aid kit out of the side pocket and wrestles a pair of gloves onto his hands.  He also grabs the tweezers. “Do you have another lamp in here?”   
  
            “No, sorry,” Matt digs his fingers into the arm rest of his couch, “but don’t worry.  I’m not.  I trust you, Foggy.”

            “I’m glad one of us does: where am I digging?”

            “Give me a minute,” Matt goes into his headspace.  He takes a few shuddering breaths, muscles tightening with every passing second.  It takes an eternity before he comes back to reality.  “Bottom right.  There’s a few pieces.”

            “How do you know that?”   
  
            “I can hear them scraping my skin when I breathe.”   
  
            “That’s terrifying.  If I ever ask and the answer is that creepy – ever again – never tell me the answer.”   
  
            Matt’s laugh is a wheeze, but it’s a genuine laugh.  Foggy’s happy he can give him that much.  He raises a hand to the wound and draws a circle where he thinks Matt wants him to dig, “Here?”   
  
            “Where?”   
  
            Foggy doesn’t want to touch it.  The wound is a series of rakes on Matt’s back.  He can feel the heat of the wound radiating through his fingers.  “This is going to hurt.”

            “It already hurts.”

            Foggy sighs, “Good point.” He presses the tweezers where he thinks Matt is directing him, gets his friend hyperventilating from the pain, and is rewarded with flecks of glass.  He collects them and goes to wipe them off.  There’s nowhere except the coffee table.  “Where else?”

            Matt takes a few more deep breaths.  He reaches around to point, losing words and what little colour he has left, but manages to guide Foggy to another section of skin.  This time the glass is visible, a small clear tooth biting into Matt’s shoulder.

            “Anything else?” 

            Matt shakes his head.  “I don’t know where the rest of them are.  I know they’re there.  I can hear them…”

            “Scary, Matt.”   
  
            “Sorry.” 

            Foggy takes a deep breath.  “I am just going to dig.  Let me know if I get close.”   
  
            Matt’s eyes are closed when he nods.  All his attempts at humour are gone.  He can’t pretend that this is funny, not when it hurts so damn bad.  And Foggy, who holds a PhD in smooth talk, clams up and can’t say a word.  What the hell do you say to a person who took a bottle to the shoulder and has their BFF pick glass out of their skin as part of their Friday night? 

            “Right there,” Matt finally says.  “Agh, right there.  Right there.  Stop.  Stop, stop, stop…”

            Foggy finds the culprit, a smattering of splinters that have embedded themselves in Matt’s flesh.  “You can hear these?”

            “I thought…you didn’t want to know details…”

            “I’m intrigued.  Like watching a train wreck.”

            He gets a smirk.  One of those sideways Matt Murdock smiles.  Between gasps and grunts of agony.  “It sounds like taking a steak knife to raw chicken.”

            “Okay,” Foggy finds another fragment near Matt’s shoulder.  “Next time I ask, and I really mean it, remind me how much I don’t want to know.”   
  
            “It’s not all bad, Foggy.”   
  
            “This would hurt for normal senses.”

            “Yeah, it definitely hurts more for me,” Matt agrees.  “Ask me when I’m not a repository for broken glass.”

            “Done,” and then, Foggy adds, “Thank God.”

            “Yes, you are,” Matt breathes a sigh of relief.  “Now for antiseptic.”

            Foggy moans, “Please don’t make me do this to you.”

            “You’d rather it get infected?”   
  
            “Ugh…there is no way to be a good friend to you!”

            He means it as a joke, but gray Matt, the Matt who belongs at the bottom of the East River, takes it very seriously.  “You are a very good friend to me, Foggy.”

            The atmosphere in the room changes.  Foggy can’t make another sarcastic remark, because he doesn’t want to rebuff.  He pats Matt’s shoulder – the one that hasn’t been mangled by a maniac with a bottle – and says, “You’re a good friend to me too, Matty.  When you’re not lying about being a vigilante.  And asking me to pour alcohol on his incredibly gross injury.”

            “How’s it look?”       

            “Like Krang from _Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles_.”   
  
            “Ugh,” Matt laughs. 

            Foggy can’t believe his luck: he picked an image that Matt has a referent for!  He continues, prepping the bottle of rubbing alcohol, “Like pizza dough that’s been tossed with the sauce on it.”

            Matt makes a bigger face.  His laughs are starting to twist into a more pained expression.  It’s not a coincidence: Foggy finally got the bottle of rubbing alcohol open.  Matt can probably count the molecules in the air from how much he’s focused on what’s coming up. 

            Foggy tries to distract him.  And psyche himself up for the big moment, “Like chicken under a meat mallet…”   
  
            Matt forces a laugh. 

            “I’m going to do this,” Foggy promises.    
  
            “Yeah, I know.”   
  
            “With a cloth?”   
  
            “No, no, just…just dump it, Foggy.  Just…”   
  
            Foggy closes his eyes, “I’m sorry.”

            “I know.”  
  
            The rubbing alcohol hits Matt’s skin and he pitches forward on the couch.  Tendons are popping out of his sick, sweaty, corpse-y arm from how hard he’s gripping the couch.  Foggy rips the bottle away.  He catches Matt before his friend can fall off the couch in a swoon.  “Hey, hey,” Foggy draws Matt back over the arm rest.  He packs the wound with fresh gauze, pleased that it’s not bleeding heavily.  He draws a blanket around his friend’s lower back and tries to generate a little bit of heat for him.  When that doesn’t work, he tries the more direct route.  “Come here, Murdock.  You’re in shock.”

            Matt groans, but he’s not in any position to fight back.  His strength’s completely drained by the fight to suffer in absolute silence.  Foggy gets him into an awkward, warmth-giving, life-saving hug.  One that doesn’t exacerbate the giant, Krang-shaped wound on his shoulder.  Matt is still shaking, but he’s starting to settle against Foggy.  He’s stopped feeling like cold Jell-o.

            He mumbles something.  “What?” Foggy asks.

            “Claire doesn’t hug,” Matt points out.   

            “This isn’t a hug, I’m saving you from shock.”

            Matt laughs, “Yeah, sure, Foggy.”   
  
            “I am administering first aid!”   
  
            “Yeah, this is how all the nurses do it.”   
  
            Foggy scoffs, “The good ones.”

* * *

  
           

Happy reading!

 


	3. ...Matt Gets Lost

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Matt gets tinnitus and lost. Good thing Foggy knows where to look.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: the characters and concepts in this story are the property of Marvel and their related affiliates. This is an amateur writing effort meant for entertainment purposes only.
> 
> This chapter was a struggle, and I’m not even sure I got it completely right…
> 
> I am so happy that people are enjoying this fic. I am bowled over by the positive responses, not to mention the fabulous suggestions for future installments! Special thanks to ouroboros_ontology (on AO3) for the prompt! I didn’t do full hearing loss, but his hearing is impaired. And Foggy does have to go looking for him. I hope you enjoy this!
> 
> I think I should mention that I’m writing each of these chapters using the prologue as a lead-in, just in case the opening lines seem too abrupt.

* * *

...Matt Gets Lost          

           

Matt stops Foggy before he can get out the door, “Actually, Foggy, I’m not at home right now.”

            Foggy’s voice just barely registers, “What?  Where are you?”  
  
            Matt takes a very deep, calming breath, the next in a sequence of many deep, calming breaths that seem to be having the opposite effect.  “Difficult to say,” the first words that come to mind at ‘black hole’ and ‘electrical storm’.  He has to come clean, “I don’t know.”  
  
            The disbelief makes Foggy even louder, thank God, “WHAT?”

            “I don’t know, Foggy,” his next few breaths are shallow as his heart rate climbs, “I’m completely lost.”  
  
            “How are you lost?” Foggy quiets and his voice gets lost in the high pitched whine currently conquering Matt’s hearing. 

            “Foggy, I can’t hear you.  Speak up.”  
  
            Foggy returns to his normal speaking volume and is audible again.  “I was just saying that you can jump off a rooftop and take out four highly skilled underworld cronies.  You navigate Hell’s Kitchen better than I would if all five of my senses were heightened.”  
  
            “There was an explosion.”  
  
            “I knew you were in that explosion!” and then, once the pleasure of being right has passed, “Oh, my God, are you okay?”  
  
            “I have tinnitus.  My ears are ringing, I don’t know where I am, and this place has to be crawling with cops…”  

            “Whoa, Matt, calm down.”  
  
            Easier said than done. Matt didn’t even realize he was panicking, but now that Foggy mentions it, he realizes he can’t catch his breath.  “About the only thing I know for certain is that I’m in one piece,” he admits, refusing to add that if he puts the phone down, he’ll feel even lost-er than he already does.  The act of holding the cell phone to his ear gives him a comforting sense of boundaries in the limitless unknown surrounding him.  But that sounds crazy, not to mention the thought amplifies his sense of panic, so Matt tries to forget it. 

            “Okay, look, you can’t have gotten far from the explosion, and you still have your other senses, right?”

            Matt laughs bitterly, “I’m not sure how my sense of smell is going to help, Foggy.”  
  
            “Look, you can lick the ground or something, but I’m going to need more to go on than being in the vicinity of an explosion if I’m going to get you out of there.  Is the GPS on your phone working?”  
  
            “I don’t carry my smart phone in the mask.”

            If Foggy curses, and he probably does, Matt can’t hear.  The ringing in his ears muffles everything his friend might be saying, leaving Matt in what looks, feels, and sounds like a gigantic singularity.  He can feel the sharp, quick throb of his pulse in the back of his throat.  “Foggy,” he speaks into the dark, urging his friend’s voice to register on the phone so he can have some sense that he is not alone in the universe.  “Foggy, talk to me, please.”

            Foggy comes back louder, “Can you tell me where the explosion was?”  
  
            Electricity chokes the life out of his memory.  His brain has entered hurricane season, and the storm is in full force.  Matt tries to remember through the fuzz of rain and the high-pitched shriek of wind in his white matter.  His perceptions don’t help Foggy, who can barely identify one pier from the next by sight let alone smell.  “Just follow the sirens,” he offers. 

            “The sirens are everywhere in a ten block radius, Matt.  I need to know where you were exactly.  I need to know every step you took away from that blast.”  
            He doesn’t even hear himself say it, the words are so quiet beneath the swell of the storm.  Maybe he just mouths them into the void, letting the blackness before his blind eyes steal away the secrets he can’t admit beyond himself.  Matt can’t deny Foggy a second time though, not when his friend’s voice is reaching a pitch that he only uses when he is truly desperate.  “I don’t know…” Matt says.  “I don’t know.  It all happened so fast.”

            Foggy says nothing.  Less than nothing.  The air is getting sucked out of Matt’s universe.  He’s got a hurricane in his head, two solid walls of sound against his ears, and utter darkness all around him.  “Foggy?”

            “I’m here,” Foggy says.  “I’m here, Matt.  Can you try and remember anything?”

            “I don’t know…”  
  
            “Matt!”  
  
            He forces himself to respond, “Yeah?”

            “Matt, you have got to work with me here.”  
  
            “I don’t know what you tell you, Foggy.  I’m really, really lost right now.”  
  
            Lost in his own body.  Lost in his own mind.  He’s blocked in completely. 

            “But you’re not totally lost, right?” Foggy interrupts the mad tailspin that his thoughts have entered.  “Come on, you know this city, Matt, and you still have three of your other senses.  Tell me about the space you’re in.  Just focus on what you can touch.”    
  
            Matt inhales and holds it.  What can he touch?  He’s been so preoccupied with not-seeing and not-hearing and the great void that he hasn’t taken stock of what he knows.  He ignores, for just a moment, not being able to see or hear well and tests the floor with his feet, “I’m crouching somewhere.  The ground is…unstable.  Littered with debris, maybe?”  
  
            “Are there walls?”  
  
            “Yes,” Matt runs his hands along them.  His brain starts yielding results.  “They’re metal, they’re thin…maybe I’m behind a door of some kind or I’m buried in remnants of the building.  There’s a plastic ceiling...” it yields to the slightest force, letting in a wave of cool, smoky air.  Matt smells more city than water.  “I’m about five blocks from the blast sight, a little north of it actually.  And I’ve hid somewhere like this before…”

            The mental image fades just as quickly as it comes.  Matt’s world on fire gets doused by the slippery whine in his ears.  He drops his hand back into his lap.  “Foggy, I could be anywhere…”  
  
            “You are somewhere, and I’m coming there, but first, Matt, I need to make another call.”  
  
            “Foggy-”

            He doesn’t know how to say please, please, Foggy, don’t hang up.  Foggy, don’t stop talking.  Foggy, don’t leave me alone.  Matt lets his hands fall away from the thin metal walls of his current setting.  He almost throws a punch before remembering that just because he can’t hear the cops doesn’t mean they can’t hear him. 

            Foggy seems to get it without being told.  “Matt, I’m not hanging up, and I am going to find you.  But to do that I need a car, and Marci is not answering my texts, so I have to call her and yell for a second.  I’ll speak loud enough for you to hear.”

            Matt can deal with that.  He breathes a sigh of relief and listens hard for Foggy’s voice.

            All he hears is the ringing, the shrieking echo of the explosion.  Matt presses the phone even more tightly to his ear and thinks he can catch every second word Foggy says.  As it turns out, all he can hear in more ringing.  The words he thinks he catches are the thunder of his raging heartbeat. 

            When he can’t take it anymore, when he’s sputtering for breath and gripping the last of his frayed nerves for dear life, Matt lets the phone drop from his ear and rest in his lap.  He can’t figure out which is worse: the relentless storm in his head, or the infinite shadow of his own limited perception.  Matt’s vocabulary can’t accommodate how empty it all seems.  How pointless it all seems. 

            He’s not lost because he can’t see and hear.  Stick would beat him to death for a notion like that.  No, Matt’s lost because for the first time, he’s the perfect victim of circumstance.  Any second now, the world’s going to find him, and he has no way of stopping it.  No way of even reacting to it.  The world can operate on him, but he can’t interact with the world.  Not meaningfully.

            “…MATT!”

            The phone vibrates from the force of Foggy’s voice.  Matt picks it up and thrusts it back against his ear.  He presses his other ear against the flimsy metal wall.  One hemisphere of his brain pulsates with the warm sun showers that Foggy’s voice inspires; the other hemisphere is a torrential downpour.

            “Matt, stay on the phone with me.  I’m coming to find you.”  
  
            “I believe that you’re coming.”  
  
            “I’ll take it.  I’ll blast _Master of Puppets._ ”  
  
            “I can barely hear you, Foggy.”  
  
            “You’ll hear this, I swear.  It’s _Master of Puppets_.”  
  
            “What if the cops find me?”  
  
            “Well, you’ve already got legal representation,” Foggy says simply.  Matt can’t argue with that.  “Just sit tight and stay quiet.  Listen for Metallica.” 

            “Foggy?”  
  
            “Yeah?”  
  
            “Don’t play the Metallica, just…just talk to me.”  
  
            “About what?”  
  
            “Anything.”

            “I can do that,” Foggy agrees, “If there is one thing I can do it’s talk.”  
  
            And talk he does.  Talks right through the ringing in Matt’s ears, through the crashing waves inside his skull, through the pure terror of his own personal oblivion.  Foggy talks him off the ledge and back into meditative focus.  Matt lets the sound happen; he lets the ringing happen; he lets the storm happen.  Because Foggy is coming, and there’s no doubt in Matt’s mind that he’s going to be found.  Eventually.  Maybe in the custody of the NYPD.

            He realizes then that Foggy’s gone quiet, that’s he’s been listening to nothing but the white noise of his own damaged ear drums for who-knows-how-long.  “Foggy?”  

            Nothing.  Not even the illusion of breathing.  Foggy’s gone.  Foggy’s been caught by the cops.  Or maybe Foggy’s screaming at him over the phone, but Matt can’t hear because he’s really had a number done on him this time.  He’s lost yet one more point of contact with the world at a time when he could really use it. 

            He drops the phone back into his lap and reminds himself to breathe.  Breathe and focus.  Tinnitus is temporary.  If he can ride it out long enough, he’ll be able to…

            The thought gets swept away with the rush of cool air that wafts through the open ceiling.  Matt lunges away from the sudden presence of body heat, the smell of a day-old t-shirt and sleep. 

            “MATT!”

            He stops himself, holding onto the voice in his head as the ringing rages on, louder than ever.  “Foggy?”

            “Yeah!  Like who the hell else would it be?”  Foggy’s hand finds Matt’s forearm and clutches it tightly.  “Actually, don’t answer that.  There are a lot of cops out tonight.”

            “How did you find me?”

            Foggy laughs, “You’re in a dumpster, Matt.”  
  
            The metal walls, the plastic ceiling, the smell he refused to pay attention to – it all makes sense suddenly.  Matt sighs and feels his thoughts uncoiling.  The memories surface of heat and sound, of running, of confusion.  Of seeking out a suitable hiding spot.  “How did you know I was in a dumpster?”  
  
            “You told me that’s where Claire found you.  That and all the things you said you felt, I put two and two together.  You have no idea how many dumpsters I had to check trying to find you.”

            He keeps his hands in reach as Matt climbs out of his hiding spot, and while his balance is still on point, Matt can’t deny that it’s nice to have someone to hold onto.  Foggy gives the void dimension, gives it presence and weight, so much so that Matt forgets, for just a moment, his ears are ringing at all. 

            Foggy sees him safely to the passenger seat of the car.  Marci’s vehicle smells overwhelmingly of chemical saccharine.  Matt gags and cracks a window.  He pulls off his mask and lets the air cool the sweat from his brow.  The ringing in his ears starts to diffuse. 

            “My offer of _Master of Puppets_ is still on the table,” Foggy says as he slams the driver’s side door.

            “Just talk, Foggy.  About anything.  Just keep reminding me that you’re there.”  
  
            So Foggy starts talking, and he's louder than the ringing in Matt's ears. 

 

* * *

 

Happy reading!


	4. ...of Exhaustion (Pt. 1)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After three days without sleep and a viral video set to “Let the Bodies Hit the Floor”, Foggy decides enough is enough for both Matt Murdock and the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: the characters and concepts in this story are the property of Marvel and their related affiliates. This is an amateur writing effort meant for entertainment purposes only.
> 
> This chapter has part of one prompt (ComicalEpiphanies asked to see Karen’s reaction the morning after Foggy finds Matt in the dumpster, and I mention that in here. Sorry for not doing a full chapter! I promise to come back to that!) and RedHatMeg provided the prompt this chapter sets up. Thank you to everyone who has sent in ideas! I hope I’m doing them justice. You’re really giving me great material. It’s fun to see what other people would like to read. 
> 
> There is the makings of a plot in this chapter that I purposefully avoided. The reason they're so vague is because I’m an oafish writer when it comes to plot, so I just add reminders that these are three working professionals. I will resolve what miniscule remnants of a plot that I’ve provided, but I’m focusing more on the characters at this point. 
> 
> Please, enjoy!

* * *

 

…of Exhaustion (Pt. 1)

 

            Foggy watches two YouTube tutorials on the cab ride over, and by the time he gets to Matt’s, he somehow feels less than qualified to be suturing up his friend’s apparently non-fatal, no-big-deal gaping shoulder wound. 

            “I used to do this for my dad at nine years old,” Matt reassures him with an air of calm that a bleeding man should not be allowed to possess.

            “Yeah, so did Doogie Hauser, another highly intelligent child that I am not,” Foggy’s comment earns him a laugh from his bloodied friend, and that’s how he knows that ready or not, he’s responsible for sutures.  Matt is not letting him off the hook for this one, because Matt has redirected his sense of Catholic conviction towards his friends. 

            Foggy sighs and drops the duffel, “One of these days, Murdock, you and I are going to have a long chat about all this faith and trust you have in me.”

            The first few are a mess.  Foggy drops the needle, tweezes Matt’s skin, pulls too hard, doesn’t pull hard enough – “Oh, look!  I’m nine-year-old Blind Matt Murdock!  I can do stitches better than Not-Blind, Grown-Ass Adult Foggy Nelson.”

            “I wasn’t blind then, Foggy.”

            “But you were nine...and drinking Scotch at the time!”

            Matt doesn’t argue with that.  He just smiles, takes the compliment for what it is, and then goes back to meditating his pain away. 

            Foggy’s last stitch, while no work of art, at least resembles the picture on Wikipedia.  He points at it proudly, “And that’s why, next time, we are sticking with cauterization.”

            “Thanks, Foggy.”

            Matt sounds like he means it.  Foggy must disabuse him of that notion, “Maybe don’t thank me until this thing scars.  My work is less Hot Supernurse and more Dr. Frankenstein.”  
  
            “I’m sure it’s fine, Foggy,” Matt stands up from the dining chair and starts to head for the bedroom.  “What time is our meeting with the Portmans tomorrow?”  
  
            Foggy’s brain takes a second to make the leap from suturing Matt’s shoulder to their day jobs.  The gap is widening every night he gets a call, and unlike Matt, he doesn’t have the experience to yo-yo between them without some kind of preamble.  By the time he has a normal response ready – they’re meeting with the Portmans at 9 – he remembers that he just stitched up his friend’s shoulder.  “Wait, you’re not going into work tomorrow, are you?”  
  
            “I’m fine, Foggy, really.  I’ve come to work with worse than this.”  
  
            “Yeah, and I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that,” Foggy goes straight into lawyer mode.  He rises to his full height and tears off his bloodied gloves.  “As your legal partner, friend, and physician, I forbid you from coming into work when you have been injured.”  
  
            Matt gets his lawyer on too, “Define injured.  At what point am I too injured to work?”  
  
            “When you have to call me, the dude with the exact opposite of a medical degree, for stitches at three in the morning,” Foggy doesn’t let Matt counter that argument.  He already has a better one lined up.  “Besides, Karen is getting very suspicious.”  
  
            “Since?”  
  
            “The dumpster incident.  When you decided that, instead of riding out tinnitus at home where no one would notice the sharpest eared man in Hell’s Kitchen was suddenly hearing impaired, you would come to work and fail hard at pretending nothing was wrong.”

            There was not a wall or desk in Nelson & Murdock that hadn’t been bumped into that day, to say nothing of Karen, who nearly got barreled over when migrainy Matt stormed out of his office for some fresh air. 

            “This is different, Foggy.  Besides, I can’t miss work every time I get hurt.  Unless you want to promote Karen and call the firm Nelson & Page.”

            “Page & Nelson,” Foggy corrects Matt.  “It sounds better that way.  And okay, fine, so you’re coming to work tomorrow, but I am not lying for you this time.  You wouldn’t believe the kind of truth gymnastics I had to perform when your ears weren’t working.”  
  
            Matt’s intrigued, “Truth gymnastics?”  
  
            “What?  I can use words too.”  
  
            “What did you tell her?”

            Foggy doesn’t want to tell him, and yet, at the same time, does, because damn you, Matt Murdock.  “I told her we went to a strip club and the music was too loud.”  
  
            Matt is uncharacteristically lost for words.  His smile crooks sideways, “And what kind of gymnastics did you perform when she asked why you brought your blind friend to a strip club?”  
  
            “The kind where I sound like a complete creep,” thank you for asking.  Foggy cleans up the first aid kit and shoves it back in the duffel bag.  “Though it was kind of nice to tell her you were my wingman for once.  But no matter!  From now on, you can come up with your own embarrassing lies.” 

            Matt’s smile becomes symmetrical, and Foggy can’t stay irritated with him.  It’s like trying to stay irritated with a puppy.  “Thanks, Foggy.”

            Foggy waves, “Don’t mention it.  Now, sleep!  We need to be somewhat credible with the Portmans tomorrow.”  
  
            “How credible?” Matt’s only half-joking.

            “How much do you like having electricity?” Foggy stops Matt before he can respond.  “Scratch that: how much do your colleagues like having electricity?”

            “I use power too, Foggy.”  
  
            “Well, let that be your measure of credibility.”

 

* * *

 

            Matt is more than credible in the meeting with the Portmans.  He is resplendent.  He is all summa cum laude, former Landman and Zack intern: this incredibly intelligent, very talented lawyer working well below his pay grade for two people who are probably going to lose their home in order to pay for justice in a court of law. 

            At first, Foggy applauds the charade; he blesses Matt, even, for giving the meeting his all, to say nothing of the work day that follows.  For a guy who was up most of the night and freshly stitched by a would-be butcher, Matt is a harder worker than Foggy, who can’t figure out if he needs more or less practice with a double life.    

            It’s well after eleven when Foggy insists everyone throw in the towel, more out of respect to their outstanding power bill than to the Portmans’ case.  They end up in two cabs – Matt to his apartment, Foggy and Karen to theirs – after agreeing to get to the office early the next day.

            “Get some sleep!” Foggy says, not for the first time.

            “Good night, Foggy,” Matt replies, also not for the first time.

            So Foggy says it again, louder, “GET SOME SLEEP!”

            Matt doesn’t bother to respond.  That’s the surest sign Foggy’s lost the argument. 

            Even surer?  Daredevil strikes again that night, this time thwarting a robbery and an attempted rape.  Foggy finds out the following morning on the news like a normal person for once.

 

* * *

 

            Day two and Matt’s still going strong: first one at the office, halfway through his second cup of coffee, saying, “Good morning,” and, “How are you?” like he went home and slept through the night.  Like he’s not wincing every time he has to move his injured arm, and he’s not missing bits and pieces of important conversations because he didn’t follow Foggy’s advice. 

            When Karen pops out to pick up lunch from the deli, Foggy ditches the smile he flashed for her departure and shoots Matt the gravest of expressions, “You need to go home.”

            “I need to be here right now,” his fingers are moving quickly over his braille display, but Foggy’s known Matt too long to be fooled by that trick.

            “You’re reading slower than usual.”  
  
            Matt smiles, “Now who’s showing off?”  
  
            “Seriously, Matt, go home.  You are not all here today.”

            “I’ll sleep tonight.”

            “Oh, really?”

            “For a while.”

            “Isn’t there like…a rule or something that you need to maintain a regular sleep cycle for your circadian rhythms?” 

            “Everybody needs to maintain a regular sleep cycle-”

            “Yeah, but you, doubly so.  Triply so.  Especially with your-”

            Karen kicks the door shut behind her.  She’s got her own body weight in food.  “We’re not finished,” Foggy hisses and goes to help Karen. 

            “What’s not finished?” Karen asks. 

            “THE WORK!” Foggy declares happily.  “There’s just so much of it!”

 

* * *

 

            It’s a lot of work that amounts to another late night, one where they take separate cabs again, where Foggy tells Matt to get some sleep, where Matt bids Foggy a good night, and the burner phone doesn’t ring at all.

            Foggy wakes up to reports about Daredevil almost getting caught by police when he fell off a fire escape. 

 

* * *

 

            Day three and Matt’s laugh is so forced.  He has to speak up to be heard over the music, “Good morning, Foggy!”  
  
            “GOOD MORNING, MATT!” Foggy holds up his phone so that the music can be heard better.  Drowning Pool’s “Let the Bodies Hit the Floor” is blasting from the device.  “HOW ARE YOU THIS FINE DAY!?”

            Karen has her hands over her ears.  She wanders over from her desk, laughing good-naturedly, “What is going on?!”

            “What’s going on is the newest viral video sensation,” Foggy hands his phone over to Karen and shoots a glare at Matt his supersonic senses are guaranteed to pick up on.  “Daredevil was caught falling off a fire escape last night, and some upstart young citizen has set it to Drowning Pool for what the kids refer to these days as the LOLZ.”

            “Oh, my God,” Karen stops the playback of the video.  She hands Foggy back his phone.  “This is tasteless.”

            “I agree: it is tasteless,” that doesn’t stop Foggy from shifting the tone of his phone to one of I-Told-You-So.  In fact, that just encourages him further.  “My heart goes out to the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen, as does my curiosity.  I can’t help but wonder how a man as adept and coordinated as he could fall off of a fire escape.”

            Karen gets on the defensive, “He was being chased by the cops, Foggy.”  She casts a glance between Foggy and Matt, suspicious as to why the former can’t stop looking at the latter.  Foggy has to look away to diffuse the tension in the room.

            He’s glad he does, because Matt’s excuse of, “Maybe he was just having an off night,” is super lame, not to mention exhaustedly delivered, and therefore deserves another glare.  Foggy’s pushing his luck though, so he refrains.  Well, that and he can torque Matt up a little further if he doesn’t acknowledge how destroyed his friend looks. 

            Foggy plasters a smile on his face that he knows Matt can hear, “Work?”

            Even without supersonic hearing, Foggy can hear Matt groan.

 

* * *

 

            Matt’s hands are shaking.  Foggy tells him so.  Also, “You’re scary pale.”

            “Has Karen noticed?”  
  
            “I told her your circadian rhythms were off.”  
  
            “I thought you said you weren’t going to lie for me?”  
  
            “Is that a lie?”  
  
            Matt doesn’t say anything, can’t think of a comeback in time because he’s moving that slowly.  Body, mind, and everything in between.  He doesn’t even bother trying to read today.  The attempt will give him away.  He has a single headphone in his ear, but the jury’s out as to whether he’s actually hearing what he’s being told.

            Foggy leans across the table so he can whisper.  He should yell – wants to yell.  Wants to be that guy, the jerk with a conscience, so that his friend takes his advice, but that approach doesn’t work on Matt.  He needs to be levelled with, needs someone who approaches the situation logically, who doesn’t try to lead him towards the truth so much as provide the best truth framework.  Foggy starts off, like any good defence attorney, with the hard evidence, “You fell off a fire escape last night.”

            “It sounded more stable than it was.”  
  
            “It did or you did?”  
  
            “Objection, counsellor,” Matt smirks, but it’s a sad sigh.  His heart’s nowhere near this conversation.  His heart’s still in bed, wrapped up in silk sheets. 

            “Overruled,” Foggy can’t bring himself to smirk.  “Bad enough that you are playing games with your life, but now you’re playing with our clients.”

            “I can do this, Foggy.”  
  
            “You have to.  We have to.  But this double life thing only works if you take care of yourself, and you are not.  You’re exhausted, Matt.  You’re here all day and out there all night, and if you keep pushing-”

            Matt stops him, “Karen’s back.”  
  
            The door pops open.  Karen waltzes back inside with lunch in one hand and a stunned look on her face, “The Portmans want to withdraw their case.”

            “What?” Foggy asks. 

            “Yeah, they just called and said they made a mistake.  They were wrong.  Then they told me to have a nice day.”

            Matt has gone stock still.  He’s really hearing Karen.  He’s really hearing for the first time all day. 

            Normally, Foggy would be all over a dropped case, and he is _a lot_ , but the Portmans have decided to behave suspiciously on a day when Matt needs some time off.  “Well, that’s great!  Isn’t that great, Matt?”  
  
            “How is that great, Foggy?” Karen takes a step towards him.  “The Portmans came to us.  They were scared and determined, and now, all of a sudden, they’re backing off?”  
  
            “Yes, and so are we,” Foggy rises from his chair.  “Come on, Matthew.  Let’s get you home.”  
  
            “Foggy, if you say one thing about my-”

            “Let’s get those circadian rhythms back in line, huh, buddy?”  
  
            “Oh, right, Matt, geez, I’m sorry,” Karen’s sympathy overwhelms her distress over the Portmans.  “Foggy and I can handle this.”  
  
            “Handle what?  They’ve dropped the case, Karen.”

            “And you buy that?”  
  
            “It doesn’t matter what I buy,” Foggy makes a big show of shuffling folders when he’s actually putting together the pertinent documents for later review.  Karen doesn’t notice.  She’s still looking at him in awe, and he feels like crap for avoiding the truth around her, hates Matt for putting him in this position, and feel awful for Matt who is about five or ten steps behind in the conversation.  “Right now, I have a friend’s circadian rhythms to attend to.  Matthew, shall we?”  
  
            “Did the Portmans-”

            Foggy absolutely cuts him off, “Can we agree that the Portmans are not going to un-drop their case?”

            “Foggy,” Karen pleads.

            “I’m being serious here,” and the bad guy.  Foggy can’t forget that.  He is being the bad guy.  He’s being the bad guy for a good reason, but that doesn’t make Karen looking at him like that, like a doomed Disney princess, any damn easier.  “Look, we will deal with the Portmans weird pick-it-up, drop-it-down relationship to their case, but right now, we’ve got places to be.  Matthew, I’m going to throw you over my shoulder if I have to.  Shall we?”

            They leave Karen cleaning up the office.  Matt keeps up the charade until the door to the office closes behind them, and then, as they move down the hall, he grows slower and slower.  By the time they hit the stairs, he has to stop and take a breather.  “I can catch a cab, Foggy,” he offers. 

            “Yeah, just like you can go home and get some sleep,” Foggy offers his arm.  Matt senses his body heat or hears the movement or whatever and wraps his hand around Foggy’s bicep.  His fingers are trembling from the exertion of being bent.  His grip’s flimsy and weak.  They take the stairs slowly, stopping at each step.

            “You need to get back in contact with the Portmans immediately.”

            “If I promise to call them, will you let this go?”

            “If you promise and aren’t lying, then yes, for now.”  
  
            “That’s not fair.  You said you wouldn’t do that anymore,” they reach the landing.  Foggy gets the door and ushers Matt out into the afternoon.  They hail a cab.  Matt enters first and thankfully mumbles his address.

            “Where?” the driver asks.

            Matt tries again, but Foggy interrupts him.  He gives the cabbie his address, followed by a stern, “And there’s a twenty in it for you if you don’t listen to my friend and make it snappy.”  
  
            “I have an apartment, Foggy.”  
  
            “An apartment where you don’t sleep, and I can’t sleep,” Foggy grumbles.

            “I can take care of myself.”  
  
            Foggy wins the argument by quietly chanting, “Let the bodies hit the floor,” until Matt shuts up.

 

* * *

 

Part 2 will have Matt at Foggy’s apartment!  Happy reading!


	5. ...of Exhaustion (Pt. 2)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You are more bruise than human now. We’ll have to start calling you Bruise Man, the most bruised man in all of Hell’s Kitchen. Your super powers will be the ability to form an unprotective layer of bruises and to stubbornly soldier on.” 
> 
> “And you can be my sidekick Sarcasm Lad.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: the characters and concepts in this story are the property of Marvel and their related affiliates. This is an amateur writing effort meant for entertainment purposes only.
> 
> I thought the first draft of this was long at 2500 words. This just kept going. There was so much to cover! This prompt for a nightmare in Foggy’s apartment provided great material. Special thanks to RedHatMeg for the prompt! I performed some edits just to tighten it up. 
> 
> Please enjoy all the fluff!

* * *

 

…of Exhaustion (Pt. 2)

 

The atmosphere in Foggy’s apartment hits him like a sedative.  One minute, Matt is fine, just fine, would be better if he was back at the office following up on the Portmans’ case, and the next, he’s swallowed up by a wave of syrupy drowse that, when he thinks about it, has probably been lying in wait for a while.  Like since Fisk’s arrest or so. 

            The air is thicker and heady with smells – not all of them bad – but it’s still disorienting.  Matt’s used to his own apartment with wide walls and decent ventilation.  He’s used to old wood, musty brick, silk sheets, and not tripping on shoes the second he walks through the door.

            “Don’t say it, Foggy,” he sighs.  The shift in his friend’s breathing tells him everything he doesn’t want to hear.  Matt kicks off his shoes and nudges them away from Foggy’s runners, the ones that still reek of college: Axe body spray, pot, booze, sweat, and copy toner.  He steps off the welcome mat, stunned by how sharp it feels through his socks.  There’s no happy medium to his sensory perception in here.  He’s either not focusing at all or he’s focusing too much, kind of like he does right before falling asleep. 

            Matt takes off his glasses, rubs the bridge of his nose, and tries to take stock of the space outside of the cotton in his head and the throbbing in his back.  The air feels solid when he tries to breathe, thick as it is from stagnancy.  “You have windows, right, Foggy?” because if not, Matt doesn’t think he’ll last the rest of the day, let alone whatever interminable period Foggy has set out for his recovery. 

            “Which I’ll be able to open when you get out of the entryway,” Foggy replies testily. 

            Matt trails his knuckles against the wall as he moves deeper into the apartment.  With every step, the gravitational pull of Foggy’s space gets stronger.  He starts plummeting through time from the scents of the furniture: a hand-me-down couch that smells more like Foggy’s mom than it does Foggy, the ancient t.v. that’s still dusty from its time in the dorm, the unfinished coffee table helped Foggy fish out of a campus dumpster.  His hand sweeps through the air and strikes a standing lamp, new and cheap and flimsy, “You rearranged in here.”

            “Is there a scary explanation for that or a really cool one?”  
            “Neither: the air feels differently, moves differently, than it did before.”  
  
            Foggy disagrees with his assessment, “I think that falls in the realm of both, actually.”  
  
            Matt has to smile.  He’s perturbed to not be at home, even more to be forcibly removed from work – where he really should be – but Foggy has always had a way of getting under his defenses.  Of cheering him up, even when it’s Foggy that’s wound him up in knots.  “I like this better.  It really opens up the room.”  
  
            “Just wait until I get a breeze going,” Foggy’s footsteps cross behind the couch.  Wood shifts on wood, and then Matt’s hit with a puff of cool air that reminds him how much his head is actually buzzing.  How much cotton wool there is padding all the thoughts crawling sluggishly through his brain.  How much his back hurts. 

            Matt distracts himself by trying to locate the couch.  His hands find the scrappy upholstery, and he moves to lower himself onto it.

            Foggy seems to come out of nowhere.  He wraps a hand around Matt’s forearm, “No way, Murdock.  Here at Casa de Nelson, we are committed to providing only the finest and highest quality recuperation for stubborn vigilantes.”  
  
            “I’m not taking the bed, Foggy,” but it’s too late because Foggy’s already guiding him there.   
  
            “If this is a slight against my bedding-”

            Matt really doesn’t want to get into that, “This isn’t a slight.”  
  
            “Then it’s settled,” Foggy flicks on the light for his own benefit, gently pushing Matt in the direction of the bed.  He yields because Foggy’s hand brushes the bruise on his back; well, that, and there’s nowhere else to go.  The atmosphere in Foggy’s, even punctuated by the breeze, gets heavier with memory.  Columbia sits on the tip of his tongue, tasting of greasy coins for the laundry machines, of day-old pizza, unwashed clothes, musk, and used books.  Matt revels in the nostalgia of it, loving it and hating it, wanting to leave and stay at the same time. 

            Foggy interrupts him, surprisingly or not, with something reminiscent of their time in College, “Sleep works better when you’re lying down.”  
  
            “I shouldn’t go to sleep now, not if you’re really concerned about my circadian rhythms.”

            “So don’t sleep!” Foggy adds cheerfully.  He starts sorting through his clothing, seeking out the cleaner pieces amidst some of the…not-so-clean ones.  “You can just hang out…horizontally…on the bed.”

            Matt runs a hand along the bed.  The sheets are the same thread count that Foggy used in college, just a little better than sandpaper against his palm.  Briefly, he’s struck by the thought of how uncomfortable they’ll be, but his thoughts are overwhelmed by how much he doesn’t want to be standing anymore. 

            He slumps down on the bed, temporarily defeated.  The impact causes the ache in his back to become a painful throb.  He closes his eyes, counts to ten, waits for the pain to subside and spatial awareness to come back to him.  For a long moment, the ceiling switches places with the walls and the floor disappears.  The bed seems to do a barrel roll.  Matt braces himself for impact, only to have Foggy catch him and pull him upright.

            That’s when he notices his eyes are closed.  Foggy’s shaking him gently, “Can you get your tie off without choking yourself?”

            Matt grumbles with undirected irritation – for being roused, for not being asleep, for letting himself get this tired, for feeling tired, for not being able to fight it – and ends up fumbling with the knot.  His fingers are thick and useless.  He finally has to let gravity do the work: he wraps his palm around the knot and lets his arm fell.  Matt’s arm, hand, and tie all spill onto the bed.  He can’t lift them up anymore. 

            Foggy understands.  Takes him a while sometimes, but he always gets it in the end, that Foggy Nelson.  He shifts around to the other side of the bed.  His hands end up on the lapels of Matt’s coat and very slowly draw it away.  Matt winces and groans from the stretch. 

            “What?  What is it?  What did I do?  Oh, geez, I think I popped a stitch.”

            The coppery smell has been hanging around Matt’s nose all day.  He tosses his head, “No, I popped a stitch.  I popped a couple last night, I just…I didn’t want to tell you.  I didn’t…”

            Words fail him. They evaporate in the back of his throat and pass out his mouth in a hiss of steam like a kettle about to boil.  His back is starting to cramp up from the pressure under his bruises.

            He needs to find his words again quickly though.  Foggy’s movements have gotten all slow and apologetic, or maybe that’s the calm before his roaring defence.  Matt can’t be sure when his brain’s taking a bath in warm milk. 

            “You weren’t sure how to say you needed help?” Foggy offers.

            The words, while probably-mostly-at-least-a-little-bit accurate, aren’t the ones Matt’s looking for.  He needs something to break the tension, not explore it further, “I didn’t want you to try and stitch it shut again.  You’re terrible at sutures, Foggy.”  
  
            Foggy takes it the right way and laughs, “Yes, thank you!” he continues to remove Matt’s coat, still gentle, almost not exacerbating the pain reverberating up Matt’s spine. 

            Almost.

            “Okay, what?  This isn’t just your shoulder that’s bothering you.”  
  
            Matt can’t find the words.  He rolls his eyes just to feel them eek along the insides of his exhausted eyelids, searching for the world he knows isn’t there but sometimes still feels like it’s coming back to him.  He’s too tired for this, in too much pain for this, for all of it.  He wishes he would just let himself pass out, but no, he can’t do that. Foggy’s started probing his back, so he has to inch away and admit, quietly, “I clipped a dumpster when I fell last night.”

            Foggy recoils, “When the hell were you going to tell me that?!”  
  
            He’s honest, “I wasn’t.”  
  
            Honesty makes him feel a little better.  Emotionally, anyways.  The rest of him feels like freshly ground meat being shoved into a sausage casing.  But that’s okay, because Matt’s head detaches and floats away from his sinking body.

            “Whoa,” the bed dips.  Matt catches himself.  He comes back into a sitting position of some of his own accord but mostly Foggy’s.  “I need you to stay up for a few more minutes.” 

            “I’m fine, Foggy.  I’m fine…” his tongue has atrophied, so the words come out slurred and wrong.  Matt forces himself to articulate and can’t.  “Just bruised.  Lot’s of bruising.  Can’t see it, but I know it’s there.”  Knows the skin feels like it’s going to split from the pressure, that the whole area is a degree or two hotter than the rest of his body, knows that it’s throbbing more by the sound than the actual sensation. 

            Foggy’s face muscles twist into a disgusted expression; Matt can hear them failing to convey exactly how disturbed Foggy is by that commentary, the one he didn’t mean to deliver aloud.  “Gross.”

             “I put some ice on it this morning.”

            “Yeah, yeah, right after you decided to stay home from work and catch up on sleep,” the sudden disappearance of Foggy’s weight on the bed nearly sends Matt backwards.  He grips the side of the bed to keep himself up.  His tie is gone.  Wasn’t he holding his tie?

            Foggy’s presence registers murkily, as does the realization that his shirt is being unbuttoned, then removed.  The cool air hits his back and part-soothes, mostly-aggravates what he can no longer generously refer to as a lot of bruising if Foggy’s heartbeat is any indication. 

            “Okay, new rule,” Foggy declares, “from now on, you may only speak of your injuries in hyperbole, because only hyperbole covers the magnitude of what happens to your body.”  
  
            The vibrations from Foggy’s voice hit his back with the same force as a punch.  Matt tries to pull himself away and nearly pitches himself into the bed.  He props himself up on one arm, “It’s fine, it’s fine, it’s fine…please stop yelling at it.”  
  
            “You are more bruise than human now.  We’ll have to start calling you Bruise Man, the most bruised man in all of Hell’s Kitchen.  Your super powers will be the ability to form an unprotective layer of bruises and to stubbornly soldier on.”

            Matt appreciates that last bit, the part he knows Foggy added to soften the blow of everything that came before.  “And you can be my sidekick Sarcasm Lad,” he thinks he says more, but it all comes out unintelligibly. 

            Foggy sighs, “I’m going to get you some ice for this.”

            Matt practically begs, “Can I be horizontal for that?”  
  
            “One sec,” Foggy rises from the bed.  The weight differential nearly sends Matt flopping over again.  He’s caught by Foggy’s arm and receives a mouthful of plush, fleecy nostalgia.  “It’s not a silk sheet, but it’s softer than the sheets I have on the bed.”  
  
            “It’s fine, Foggy.”  
  
            “No, it’s not, and I get it.  I do,” Foggy places the sweater in Matt’s hands and lets him play with it for a second.  His fingertips trace the inside and are met with something cushiony, not silk but not sandpaper.  Processed wool.  Clean but still carrying all the best elements that smell has to offer in Foggy’s apartment.  When he manages to get it over his head (with Foggy helping.  A lot), Matt gets swept back to late-night study sessions and insomniatic hang-outs.  He releases his flimsy hold on sitting upright for the draw of Foggy’s pillows.  “Easy,” Foggy eases him down onto his less injured side.  Matt draws himself the rest of the way onto his stomach. 

            He buries his hands in the cuffs of the sweater, loving the contrast between stiff, crunchy bed sheets and the soft down of Foggy’s clothes.  He’s aware of Foggy drifting around him, but time starts developing longer and longer gaps in its chronology.  His socks disappear.  The sheets get pulled over top of him.  Something cold and gelatinous gets packed on his shoulder blades and spine.  Then Foggy flicks the light switch (a fact that warms Matt because it’s so Foggy, so immensely Foggy, the doing of something that forgets the fact that Matt’s blind, and it’s nice to have those moments). 

            And that’s when he finally falls asleep. 

 

* * *

 

             He watches as his father’s face is swallowed up in a tunnel of blackness, chemical burn raging against his corneas.  Insects chewing up his eyes.  A thousand other unpleasant metaphors for the moment he loses his vision.

            Loses.  Like he forgot where he put it.  Like he just left it some place.  Where was the last place you remember having your eyes, Matty?  On a street in Hell’s Kitchen, pushing an old man out of the way of a massive truck, right before a splash of corrosive goo landed on them. 

            It’s not the worst dream Matt has.  Being blinded is just prologue to waking up in the hospital.  To the loud, hot, prickly stink of senses turned all the way up to eleven.  Heart monitor racing.  Bandages over what might as well be empty sockets.  Ragged, childish terror, “DAD, I CAN’T SEE.”  
  
            He doesn’t know his dad’s face at first.  The good dreams end with recognition and resolution, the dawning of realization _this is my father’s face_ and _I am going to survive this_.  The nightmares end before he reaches that point, when the mounds of flesh under his fingers could be anyone.

            Opening his eyes doesn’t help.  Matt’s still stuck in the dark, back throbbing.  He can’t turn over without setting off the string of hydrogen bombs along his spinal cord.  The explosions of pain block out of his sense of touch and his hearing.  Matt’s distantly aware of crawling across a mile of broken glass to a flimsy headboard.  He can hear something breathless and animal whimpering from several blocks away.  Saltwater pools in the back of his throat, and he can’t breathe through his nose at all without choking on snot. 

            Gradually, the world starts to penetrate his hysteria, first in small spurts and then finally in a shower.  There’s a hand soothing circles on his bicep.  The whimpering sounds are coming from him, and they’re mercifully disintegrating.  Sweat and tears are pouring from his face, causing his eyes to sting, but there’s another hand taking care of that too, a hand and a cool, damp cloth. 

            Foggy draws nearer and louder.  He delivers a litany of You’re Okays and Just Breathes until Matt Is Okay and Just Breathes.

            When it’s over he collapses against the pillows, spent.  His senses are safe to wander the room.  Almost immediately he’s on his hands against, climbing through smells that aren’t his, textures he doesn’t recognize, sounds of a neighbourhood too quiet to be his.  “Foggy, where am I?”

            “My place, remember?” the hand on his bicep gets more forceful. 

            Matt uses the touch as an anchor for the world.  He fumbles through the dark for any landmarks and can’t find any.  “When did you get a double bed?”  
  
            “I’ve always had a double bed.”

            “They let us have these in res?”  
  
            “What?  Matt, we’re not in residence.”

            “It smells like residence,” and feels like residence and sounds like residence and it can’t be residence.  Matt starts to crumble anew.  All of this feels like an extension of his nightmare.  Tremors break out all over his body, the aftershocks of his psychological earthquake. 

            “Matt, buddy, you’re at my apartment.  We don’t live at residence anymore, remember?  We graduated.  We are now successful lawyers at a law firm with hovercrafts for chairs.”

            “We can barely afford chairs.”

            “See!  You do remember.”  
  
            Matt feels the tension drain from his body, and he sags back down onto the bed.  Foggy’s hand doesn’t leave his bicep.  In fact, his friend one-ups the gesture by pressing a cool cloth against the back of Matt’s neck. 

            “You want to talk about it?” Foggy asks.

            Matt shakes his head, “It’ll just freak me out again.  Bad dreams, Foggy.  That’s all.”

            “I have bad dreams about singing a closing statement in front of a jury of Muppets.  What you just went through outranks that.”

            “It’s fine,” Matt says breathlessly.  “I’m fine.”  
  
            Foggy doesn’t just disbelieve him.  Foggy anti-believes him.  His tone of voice suggests that he believes in unicorns more than what Matt’s just said, “Uh huh, and the Black Knight always triumphs.”

            Matt changes the subject, “Can you open a window in here?”  
  
            Footsteps.  Squeaking.  Breeze.  Matt drinks in the wind like a dying man.  He tracks Foggy’s presence through the room by sound, half-expecting Foggy to leave and desperately not wanting him to.

            Before Foggy can get to the bedroom door, Matt stops him by saying, “I really do appreciate this, Foggy.”  
  
            “What the ‘but’ to this is had better be good,” Foggy replies. 

            Matt breathes through another wave of pain rolling up his back.  “ _But_ I don’t…I’m just not used to people taking care of me.”  
  
            The room could not get any stiller.  Foggy has been stunned into absolute silence.  When he finally speaks, it’s with utter surprise, “Wow, Murdock.  I had no idea.”  He tests out the words on his tongue and they come out sounded new, foreign, and unprecedented, “You’re not used to people taking care of you.  All these years, and I just…I never knew.”

            Matt finally identifies what he’s hearing in Foggy’s voice, “Are you making fun of me?”  
  
            Foggy’s hand comes to rest on his shoulder, “Has this been going on since college?  Another secret you’ve been keeping from me?  Geez, first you’re a vigilante, and now you’re not used to be taken care of.  The well of secrets just gets deeper with you, doesn’t it?”  
  
            Matt cracks first, his chuckle breaking free from his throat despite how not funny Foggy is being.  The sound of it is a little raw and wheezy from the pain, and he has to stop before he starts to cry or something equally embarrassing.  As it stands, he’s grateful when Foggy drops onto the bed next to him even if it causes his mangled back to twist painfully. 

            “I know that you are crap at this,” Foggy continues, “but that’s okay!  I’m pretty crap at this too!” 

            “You aren’t crap at this, Foggy.”  
  
            “Okay, that right there, that Foggy-Nelson-Can-Do-No-Wrong attitude, that’s part of the problem.  You’ve somehow got it in your head that you deserve the barest possible minimum of human decency, so when you have a bad night, you figure you’ll just go home and suffer in silence or that stiff-upper lip all you vigilantes like so much.”  
  
            “That’s Catholicism.”  
  
            “That’s crazy is what that is,” Foggy rubs a circle into his bicep again.  “If you are going to do the whole lawyer-by-day, vigilante-by-night thing, you have got to get over whatever it is that keeps you from doing the things you need to do to be okay.  Sometimes that’s not coming into work.  Other times, it is getting some sleep before you fall off a fire escape.”  
  
            “I can take care of myself, Foggy.”

            “So take care of yourself!” Foggy shrugs.  “Take some me-time!  You can’t save clients or the city if you can’t even save yourself.”

            “We don’t have any clients,” Matt laughs lightly.

            “And we will continue to not have clients so long as I’m stuck Mother Henning you,” Foggy realizes how that sounds and provides an ending that’s slightly more positive.  “Not that I mind so much, and not that you don’t need it, but man, you can be a pain in the ass.”

            Matt chuckles, feels pain, tries to stop chuckling, but that just makes him laugh more, “That part I got from my dad.”  
  
            Foggy squeezes his arm supportively, “I’m going to get you some Advil.”  
  
            “No, no, Foggy,” he feels Foggy’s absence worse than the throbbing in his back.  “I’ll be asleep by the time you get back.”  
  
            “I’ll leave you to it.”  
  
            “Would you stay?  Just…stay here until I’m asleep?”

            “You sure you don’t want to talk about it?”  
  
            “Tomorrow.  Or later today, whatever time it is.”  
  
            “Okay, but you don’t get to pull any of this ‘I’m fine’ crap.”

            “Okay, okay…” Matt’s head sinks into the pillow.  He lets go of the pain in his back and clings to the sound of Foggy’s heartbeat in the dark.  The small beacon of red warmth the overtakes the shadows in his mind.  “I promise.”  
  
            Foggy’s hand runs over the back of his head.  “Good night, Bruise Man.”  
  
            “Please don’t call me that,” Matt mumbles, and then, just before he falls back asleep, “Sarcasm Lad…”

             

* * *

 

Happy reading!


	6. ...of Open Manholes (Pt. 1)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No, Foggy – Matt’s not in a dumpster again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: the characters and concepts in this story are the property of Marvel and their related affiliates. This is an amateur writing effort meant for entertainment purposes only.
> 
> I didn’t mean to go so long between updates. This prompt just really tried me. I had a lot of trouble negotiating the tone between comedy and angst. I’ve got Matt feeling sorry for himself a little bit in this chapter, and I hope that comes across as having some depth of feeling instead of flying in the face of the character. I also hope the chapter hits the right tone with regards to how Matt sustains his injuries. I apologize if the content offends anyone and will be happy to edit if that’s the case. 
> 
> Special thanks to TheGingerAvenger for the prompt and to you, dear readers, for your support, encouragement, and lovely correspondence. It is a real pleasure to hear from you! Enjoy!

* * *

 

…of Open Manholes (Pt. 1)

 

          The call comes in the middle of the day from Matt’s actual cell phone while Foggy’s at the office, and it has a rather Sherlockian air.  A kind of “come if convenient; if not, come anyway” with an edge of pain that Foggy can hear before Matt even starts speaking. 

          Foggy lowers his voice so Karen won’t hear, “What’s wrong?”

          Matt breathes raggedly, “I need your help.”

          “Where are you?”

          No response.  Foggy groans, “You’re in a dumpster again, aren’t you?”

          “I wish I was in a dumpster again.  AGH!  Geez…” Matt wheezes.  Foggy strains to hear over the sounds of his groaning.  “I’m really close to the office, actually.”

          “Make me ask one more time, Murdock…”

          “I will tell you…if you _promise_ not to overreact.”

          “You are in a dumpster again!”

          Matt struggles to catch his breath and speak at the same time, “I’m not in a dumpster.  I promise.  I’m-”

          His voice cuts out.  Foggy thinks, at first, that Matt’s hung up until the sounds of his friend’s pained moans reach him again.  “Where?” he asks. 

          Matt’s voice is even spacier when it returns, “I’m here.  I’m here…”  
  
          “Where the hell is here?”

          The pause is a loaded one.  Matt really doesn’t want to say.  Pain finally overcomes his stubbornness.  His next words piggyback a mighty, agonized moan, “I fell down a manhole.”

          “You’re not serious,” Foggy waits for the punchline.  “No way.  You did not.”

          “I did, Foggy.”

          “In all the years I’ve known you-”

          “I know.”      
  
          Foggy can’t figure it out.  Nevermind the statistical unlikelihood of a blind person actually falling into an open manhole.  Matt is trained in ninja reflexes and is more aware than even the most sighted of people.  “How?” he knows it’s not the most relevant question, but he still has to ask.  “How did it happen?”

          “I was tailing two guys who were talking about Owlsley.  They got into a car, so I…I ran into the alleyway.  I was trying to get to the rooftops.”

          “Weren’t you using your cane?”  
  
          “I threw my cane into the trash.” 

          All of a sudden, something clicks.  “You keep losing your canes because you ditch them chasing bad guys in the middle of the day.  It’s like a puzzle coming together, Murdock.” 

          “Now you know.”  
  
          Mystery solved, Foggy gets back to business at hand, “So where are you?”

 

* * *

 

          The manhole is poorly demarcated.  Foggy doesn’t even notice it’s open, and he’s following Matt’s directions over the phone.  He finds Matt’s cane beside the dumpster before he notices the sudden absence of ground in front of him. 

          A long smear of blood drains into the open manhole, the only evidence of Matt’s fall.  Foggy hangs up his phone and uses it for a flashlight, scanning the concrete below for any signs of his friend.  “Matt?” the darkness is not very forthcoming.  “Matt, you in there?”  
          “I’m here, Foggy,” Matt rasps from the dark. 

          Foggy puts his cell phone away.  There’s a ladder.  Why the hell didn’t Matt just climb up the ladder?  Oh, Christ, Foggy thinks: he’s been making a big deal about this manhole thing, and Matt’s too hurt to climb a ladder.  Foggy descends into the darkness, bracing himself for the worst: for half-dead Matt, drained-of-blood Matt, every-bone-in-his-body-broken Matt.

          What he finds is better than anticipated, but that’s not saying much.  Matt’s chin is road rashed to hell, along with his palms.  There’s small scratches by his eyes where his glasses must have shattered from the impact.  The top of his suit is ripped in several places revealing more bloody gashes underneath.  He has one leg bent towards his chest, and the other stretched out in front of him to accommodate his massively, disgustingly swollen ankle. 

          Foggy’s worry subsides and is replaced with something softer, warmer, more sympathetic.  “That’s why you didn’t climb out,” he sighs. 

          “That’s part of it,” Matt replies.  He holds his next breath for strength before releasing it.  “The other part is that I didn’t want to climb out.”

          “You’re not in the mask right now,” Foggy offers.  “Somebody would have helped.”

          “Yeah, exactly, somebody would have helped,” he says it with such disdain: _helped_.  Like he’s taking a bite out of world.  “Helped the poor blind guy who fell down a manhole.”

          “I didn’t even see this manhole, buddy.  I wouldn’t have if you didn’t tell me.”  
  
          “And if you crawled back out, you would have gotten a few jabs for being clumsy or unobservant.  If I crawl out, I get a fluff piece in the _Herald_ : Blind man falls down open manhole,” Matt’s eyes are glistening with rage-tears, bitter and brutal. He offers another awful headline, “Manholes are the biggest threat to blind people.”

          Foggy offers the one thing he always can: a sardonic silver lining.  “We could sue the city.  Pay our bills for a couple of months on a settlement.”  
  
          “And in a few months I, what, fall down another manhole?”

          “You can’t pull the same con twice, Matt.  Geez, who taught you to exploit the justice system?”

          It’s hard to tell if Matt’s smiling, but Foggy swears he can see a slight curvature to his friend’s lips.  “You’re not going to fall down another manhole,” Foggy presses.  “You barely fell down this one.”  
  
  
          “I definitely fell down this one,” Matt says.  “I’ve got asphalt in places I didn’t know existed.”  
          “Save if for your statement.  We’re going to need quotables like that when we sue this city’s ass for endangering a blind man’s life.”

          Matt’s smile fades.  The joke’s too real again, too painful.  Foggy draws nearer to his friend and sinks down to the ground.  Matt’s blood and bruises are garish, but they’re nothing compared to what’s going on inside.  The pavement hurt more than just Matt’s body. 

          Foggy doesn’t know quite what to say or do.  He’s always seen Matt as indestructible, rolling with all the punches of his disability (such as it is).  Matt’s never been scared of the way people view him.  Now he’s sitting alone in the dark rather than face what the world thinks about him, because he’s right.  Matt knows that the world isn’t going to let a man with eyes like his live this down, and it’s not like he can come clean about his heightened senses. 

          And there’s no words that can come from Foggy – or any seeing person for that matter – to adequately cover all that, least of all when the next thing Foggy says has to be, “We are going to have to get your ankle checked out at the hospital.”

          Matt tries to nod and ends up bursting into tears: from the pain in his chin or the thought of telling the hospital staff what happened.  “No, Foggy, please.  Please, no hospital.”

          “Look at your ankle, Matt,” Foggy doesn’t want to beg.  He wants to be strong and stoic, to take charge of this crappy situation, but he wants to make Matt feel better more than that.  “We need to get that x-rayed.  It might be broken.”  
  
          “It’s not broken,” Matt swats the tears out of his eyes.  He’s got the upper hand, and hell if he’s going to let Foggy take that away.

          His stance just bolsters Foggy into action, “That doesn’t mean you don’t need to see a doctor.  Your ankle is way too swollen just to be a simple sprain.  You could screw it up even more if we take a cab to your place and climb your murder stairs.”

          Matt fails at not-laughing just a little at the mention of the stairs at his apartment building.  Foggy takes the advantage, “Whatever happens at Emerg to save your butt-kicking foot from amputation or permanent deformity can’t be worse than those stairs.”

          “I’m nodding on the inside,” Matt replies without moving his injuries anymore. 

          “We’ll come up with a really good lie too: like the fire escape you were standing on fell into a pool of sharks or…you were jumped by a ninja in an alleyway who wore concrete armour.”

          “I thought you didn’t want to lie?”

          “Not to people I care about.  I don’t care about the people at the hospital.  Well, except for your Claire friend.  We’ll tell her the truth.” 

          The corners of Matt’s lips oscillate between smiling and frowning.  “Thanks, Foggy,” he speaks quietly.  His thanks is smaller and more fragile than his ego is right now.   

          Foggy takes his friend’s arm in what he hopes in an un-raked spot.  “Can we get out of here now?”  
  
          Matt does more nodding on the inside.  Foggy pats him on the back of the hand.  “You’re okay, buddy.  You’re okay...” it’s the only words he knows for the moment. 

          “Yeah, yeah,” Matt lets Foggy help him up by the arm.  He props himself up on his good foot, letting the other drag behind him by the toe.  “I know.  I just wish I could be okay without having fallen in a manhole.”  
  
          “Stupid manholes,” Foggy draws Matt along towards the ladder.  “We should start an initiative.  The Hell’s Kitchen Pile Society.”

          “Pile?”

          “The pile is the natural enemy of the hole.”

          Matt chuckles under his breath in order to move as little as possible.  
  
          Foggy continues, “Maybe that should be my sidekick nickname?  Pile Lad!  Or, no, wait – Private Pyle!  I can dress up like that character from _Full Metal Jacket_!”  
  
          “Isn’t Pyle the one who commits suicide?”  
  
          “Details,” Foggy scoffs. 

          “That’s a pretty big detail,” Matt gets to the bottom of the ladder and looks up.  “Can I just stay down here forever?”  
  
          “We’ll have to change your superhero nickname,” Foggy sighs.  “Instead of Daredevil…” he thinks about it.  Really hard.  Needs to be the funniest damn nickname oh, he has it! “We’ll call you the Holy Man!”

          Matt actually laughs, “That’s a horrible thing to say, Foggy.”

          “I know, right?!” Foggy agrees.

* * *

Happy reading!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As I was posting this, I realized that Private Pyle, the character from Full Metal Jacket, is played by Vincent d'Onofrio.


	7. ...of Open Manholes (Pt. 2)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Foggy and Karen get Matt out of the manhole and back on solid ground both literally and metaphorically. They’re talented like that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: the characters and concepts in this story are the property of Marvel and their related affiliates. This is an amateur writing effort meant for entertainment purposes only.
> 
> Thank you to the many reviewers/commenters who requested to see Matt getting out of the manhole! This chapter is for you! I also know that there was a request to see some Karen and Claire. While Foggy and Matt will be central to the storytelling, I will make an effort to include other characters in future installments. 
> 
> Thank you, as well, to all the readers who take the time for this fic. I am consistently overwhelmed by the response these installments receive. I’m so happy everyone’s enjoying the fic. I am so appreciative of the support.

* * *

 

…of Open Manholes (Pt. 2)

           “Okay,” Foggy declares.  “Okay, you might have to stay down here.” 

  
          Matt doesn’t say a word.  He’s four rungs up, one more than Foggy, and there’s still about ten more to go before they’re out.  Already, he’s clinging by his forearms and trying not to scream.  His hands are bound in neck ties – Foggy’s on the right, his on the left – and they still burn.  But it’s not the physical pain that’s getting to him.  The pain in his ankle is manageable.  Even his raked skin and bruised chest don’t bother him so much.  Being stuck underground, though?  Because he can’t see where he’s going?  That, right there, that’s real pain. 

          Foggy, to his credit, is still trying to turn this situation into a comedy.  “I mean it won’t be so bad.  There’s no view for you to miss.  My uncle owns a cleaning company, so we can get rid of that smell.  I’ll get someone else to slip you processed meats at mealtime.  I think I could even talk Karen into moving the office here.  Rent’s wa-ay cheaper!  Whadda ya say?”

          The city seems so far away.  All the noises are distilled through the open manhole, so by the time they reach Matt’s ears, he can’t tell human from animal, animal from machine.  He’s getting better acoustics from the tunnel they’re stuck in.  Still, he is not ready to keep going.  There’s a lot of people up there about to see a blind guy and his friend crawl out of the New York City sewers system.  “I think you might be right, Foggy…” he groans, dropping his head against his forearm.  “I mean, if it’s good enough for the Ninja Turtles…”  
  
          “Okay, that was a test, and you failed.  But don’t worry, Matt, I forgive you.  I know that was just your mangled ankle talking.”  
  
          “It’s a sprain, Foggy.”  
  
          “That doesn’t make it any less mangled,” Foggy nudges his shoulder against Matt’s thigh.  “You know, I think I have an idea.”  
  
          “If you say ‘call an ambulance’, I really will live down here.”

          Foggy ignores him, “What if I carried you up on my shoulders?  You’d still have to hang onto the ladder and stuff, but it’s better than me calling an ambulance after you fall _again_.” 

          Matt is willing to try anything, but he has to ask, “Are you sure you can handle my weight, Foggy?”

          “Buddy, you are half my size,” Foggy insists.  “How bad could it be?”

 

* * *

 

          “Okay, okay, okay…this time…I mean it…” Foggy can’t get as much air as his heart needs for another rung of lift-broken-Matt-up-a-ladder.  He extricates himself from the weird piggyback formation and drops back down to the ground to catch his breath.  “You might actually have to stay down here.”

          Matt feels guilty for being such a burden and even guiltier for thinking about how close he is to the finish. “I’m sorry, Foggy.”  Sorry that the air tastes so good, that the universe has shape, size, and dimension beyond a neverending tunnel of black.  Sorry for not being sorry enough. 

          Foggy isn’t paying attention to his Catholic guilt spiralling out of control, “I mean what are you made out of?  Boulders?  Titanium?  Adamantium?”

          “It doesn’t matter,” Matt says.  He raises his hands to the next rung, relishing the cool bite of wind on the backs of his exposed fingers.  “I think I can make it…”  
          He hops and pulls his foot up to the next rung but miscalculates.  His toe lands but slips, and he damn near slips back onto the ground to mangle his other ankle.  As it stands, the wounds on his palms reopen.  Matt tastes blood, asphalt, and iron as he slips away from the burning above to the darkness below.

          Foggy springs into action, shoving his un-mangled foot on the nearest rung.  “Please,” he begs, “please let me call an ambulance.  I’ll even let you fall and knock yourself unconscious before it shows.  Just _please_.”

          “It won’t just be the ambulance, Foggy.  It’ll be…it’ll be the cops and the fire department.  And then there’ll be bystanders.  I…I…” words fail him.  Describing the scene has made it real, made it palpable.  Even hypothetical pity fills him with revulsion and self-loathing. 

          Matt forces himself to take another rung by hopping, lands it, and is about to attempt another when he realizes that this is stupid.  He is being stupid.  Stupid and petty.  He shouldn’t have fallen in the damn manhole in the first place.  He should have to be paraded around as the sad blind man for a while.

          He’s about to tell Foggy to just get it over with when he realizes that Foggy’s heartbeat has slowed.  His friend’s crawling up the ladder behind him.  “That was another test,” it wasn’t, “which you failed, again.  But don’t worry, I still forgive you,” Foggy draws Matt’s legs back over his shoulders and starts climbing faster this time.  Matt has to work to keep up and make sure he doesn’t fall backwards.  “I know…” Foggy grunts from the exertion, “that it is your concussion talking.”

          “I don’t have a concussion.”

          “You will…if you don’t…keep climbing…and try…to fall… _again_.”  
  
          Matt hand hits pavement, sweet pavement, and he gets a faceful of the city.  Sunlight warm on his cheeks, wind ruffling his hair, a raucous celebration of traffic and chatter and (distantly) sirens.  He plants his hands on solid ground and lifts himself deftly off Foggy’s shoulders and onto the far side of the manhole.  His feet dangle into the tunnel for a moment, just long enough for his ankle to go wild with pain.  Gravity keeps pulling more fluid into the join.  Matt slides it out of the manhole onto solid ground to keep it elevated.    

          Foggy takes a couple minutes.  His respiratory system is working triple time when he emerges, so he plunks himself down next to the dumpster to catch his breath. 

          “I’m wagging my finger,” he tells Matt, “for emphasis.  You owe me so much for this.”  
  
          “Okay.”

          “Like a lot, Murdock.”  
  
          “Yes, a lot.  Everything.”

          Foggy gets to his feet.  He’s not ready to, but he’s in a hurry now that they’re above ground.  Matt offers his arm, and Foggy gets him vertical again.  The change in altitude sends more blood shooting into his ankle.  Matt bites back a scream.  “Let’s get a cab,” Foggy says as he half-drags Matt out of the alley.  “Oh, and watch your step.  There’s an-”

          “Open manhole there?  Yeah, I know,” Matt moans.

          Foggy stoops for a second and picks something up off the ground.  “I was going to say some blind guy’s cane, but yeah, watch out for the manhole too.”

          Matt tries not to sound bitter as he returns the volley - “I can’t watch for anything, Foggy” – but he knows he fails because Foggy holds him just a little tighter after that. 

         

* * *

 

          At the hospital, Matt sits in silence as Foggy weaves a web of words that doesn’t overlook the fact that he’s blind but spares him a lot of the sympathy that comes with falling down a manhole.  Something, something, something broken fire escape ladder.  Six foot drop.  Can you just get some ice on that already? 

          Thankfully, nurses in Hell’s Kitchen don’t have time for sympathy or long-winded explanations.  They barely have time to see Matt.  He has to wait for an x-ray, for an ice pack, to have his wounds cleaned.  Foggy takes the time to call Karen, and he gets to tell a brilliant lie that’s about as mangled as Matt’s face.  She shows up just before Matt gets seen, four hours later, which is weirdly a perk they get just because Matt’s so damn polite and he’s wearing a permanent Kicked Puppy expression.

          They get him a bed.  Blind-duck Matt with his puffy, scratched face and bloody hands, hobbling everywhere on his friends’ arms because of his swollen, useless ankle: he gets a bed for saying his pleases and thanks yous and being courteous like a good Catholic boy.  Then he’s barely in a gown before they whisk him off to x-rays. 

          “So what happened?” Karen asks when she’s confident Matt can’t hear.

          Foggy’s mouth goes dry.  He can’t remember what he said in the first place.  Did he mention fire escapes to Karen?  Did he mention sharks?  She’s the type of person he would deflect with humour.  It might have been ninjas.  “Umm…he was pretty sketchy with the details…?” Foggy can’t help making that sound like a question.  “I know that he fell.  I think he said it was a rickety fire escape.”  
  
          “Where was he?”

          This part he can be honest about, “An alley.”  
  
          “Why was he there?”

          Foggy leaves that alone.  Matt’s a big boy.  He has to field at least a few of these lies himself.  “He wouldn’t say.  I think he was pretty embarrassed to have taken the fall.”  
  
          Karen lowers her voice to a conspiratorial whisper.  “Do you think maybe he was beaten up?”  
  
          “Who would beat up a blind guy?”

          “Come on, Foggy,” she’s got her fighting face on, the one that she wears when she’s following smoke to a flame.  “You know he wasn’t in a car accident that time, and that he doesn’t just fall down stairs or drop things.  You have to.”

          Foggy doesn’t want to lie, so he sidesteps carefully around the truth by simply pretending not to have any knowledge of it, “Okay, then what’s happening to him?”  
  
          She shakes her head, “I don’t know.  I do know that he didn’t get hit by a car.  Someone did that to him, and he wouldn’t say who or why.”  
  
          “We can’t do anything about a theory,” he says in his best defence attorney voice. 

          “We can’t just wait for him to tell us what’s going on either,” she states in a perfect impersonation of a prosecutor. 

          Foggy leans in good and close, hating himself for what he’s about to say and not seeing any other option: he trusts Matt.  He knows Matt’s doing good work.  He loves Karen and doesn’t want to see her hurt.  “I’m worried about him too,” he assures her, “but Matt isn’t a corporation we can investigate.  He’s our friend.  We have to let him have his privacy.”

          “His privacy might get him killed one of these days.”

          “Not today,” Foggy offers.  

          It’s a weak-sauce closing argument, one that Foggy doesn’t even buy himself, but he finishes at just the right time.  The doctor approaches them from the end of the hall and gives them a rundown of Matt’s injuries: scratches and abrasions (minor), sprained ankle (severe).  When she tells them that Matt refused a cast, the doctor gets an earful from Foggy.  “Whatever he says, Doctor, you have to cast that ankle.  If you don’t, he is never going to walk on that foot again,” Foggy’s seen the scar from Matt’s abdomen, the wound that required several rounds of sutures because it kept getting ripped open.  Matt’s foot won’t ever heal if he’s allowed to walk on it.

          “You want to tell him that?” the doctor shows them where Matt’s having his ankle bound in a tensor bandage by a nurse. 

          “Matt,” Karen says, relieved. 

          Foggy opens his arms wide, plasters a grin on his face, and declares, “You’re gonna get a cast!”

          Without his glasses, Matt’s defensive expression takes on a whole new level of derision.  “I don’t need a cast, Foggy.”  
  
          “He can’t get a cast today anyways,” the nurse adds.  “Too much swelling.  He’ll have to come back.”

          Foggy is going to sling Matt over his shoulder kicking and screaming.  Actually, he may just get Matt drunk and cast it himself.  That sounds easier and less back breaking than trying to carry Matt again.

          “I don’t need a cast,” Matt says, as if he knows what Foggy’s planning.  As if he just got wind of Foggy’s thoughts and knows he’s going to wake up after a night of debauchery with two tonnes of plaster on both ankles and his wrists because Foggy can be a real ass 1) when he’s drunk and 2) trying to make a point. 

          As if he knows that Matt knows, Foggy takes _that_ tone, “Matthew.”  
  
          Matt reciprocates, “Franklin.”

          “I’ll leave you here overnight.”

          “I’ll sign an AMA.”  
  
          “And crawl up the murder stairs to your apartment?  Much as I would love to see that, I have already saved you from one bad fall today.  I’m not in the mood to help you with another.”  
  
          The speed of his retort flummoxes Matt for a second.  Damn it: he won’t be able to climb those stairs easily, even with crutches.  He takes a moment to respond, “Karen, would you…?”  
  
          “Oh, yes: our 110 pound secretary would be only too happy – not to mention incredibly capable – of hauling your two tonne body up the stairs to your apartment.”

          Karen’s hopeful: “I think I can manage, Foggy.”

          He laughs, “You say that now, but you have never carried him up a ladder on your shoulders before.  Which I have, so I am saying that you are getting a cast and you are staying at my place until it goes on.”  
  
          “You live in a walk-up too, Foggy.”  
  
          “Yeah, but my stairs don’t hunger for human flesh.  Yours do,” Foggy can see a smile tugging on the corner of Matt’s lips, so he presses on, “They’re a death trap, and it’s a miracle we have survived them for as long as we have.”

          The smile breaks free at last, but the muscles around Matt’s eyes tell Foggy he’s not happy about it.

 

* * *

 

          Matt measures the staircase by coughing at the landing and following the reverberations all the way up to Foggy’s floor.  He’s loathe to admit that this is a better idea than his apartment, but he’s happy there’s only a single flight to climb before he can elevate his ankle again.  Advil is simply no match for the weight of all his bodily fluids and most of his internal organs collecting in an already swollen joint.

          Still, the stairs in Foggy’s apartment aren’t as wide as his, giving Matt another long moment of pause before embarking.  He taps out their dimensions using the crutch as his cane.  More vibrations fill the staircase.  He can make it if he concentrates on where his good foot is going. 

          “On the way up to heaven, the Devil goes second…”

          He almost doesn’t hear Karen from how hard he’s focusing, but the word ‘Devil’ shatters his concentration.  “Whatwas that?”  
  
          “Just something the nurse said: when you’re going upstairs, send your good foot first, your injured foot second.”  
  
          “So when you’re going to hell, you send the Devil first?” Foggy extrapolates.

          Matt smirks, “Devils should always be the first to fall.”  He’s on the fifth step when he realizes, “In this case, wouldn’t you two be the Devils?”  
  
          “Wait and see what happens if you don’t get that cast put on.”  
  
          Karen seconds Foggy with a laugh.

 

* * *

 

          He gives himself time to wake up, which is odd.  Normally Matt’s up and at ‘em in milliseconds.  His instincts are hibernating at the moment though, soothed to sleep by Foggy’s apartment.  There’s an ice pack on his ankle, mostly melted, so it slouches sleepily over the curve of his limb.  Even the air currents here are slow, languid.  Breeze drifts lazily from the window before pooling in the corners, over Matt’s face, into the bedroom. 

          The sounds are all nice and muted too: Foggy’s at the kitchenette trying to scrounge enough dishes for three people to eat from, and his skin sings as it passes over the cheap porcelain of his dishware.  He’s got something rich and homey in the oven – Mama Nelson’s macaroni and cheese, just beginning to brown.  Karen’s in the bedroom digging through one of his many piles.  “Eureka!” she whisper-shouts, and then there’s some scratching as a record hits the turn table and music lightly permeates the apartment.  Amanda Palmer, about the only artist who Karen and Foggy can agree on. 

          Foggy’s not a lazy person, Matt knows.  He’s determined and stubborn enough to play chicken with Matt’s tolerance levels.  Karen, too, is tenacious, driven.  But Foggy has learned the art of determining when to work and when not to, and his space emulates that just the same.  They don’t have a case, nobody’s life is threatened, and Matt’s had a pretty bad day.  All of this amounts to an evening of comfort food, Amanda Fucking Palmer, and good company at Casa de Foggy.

          Matt considers opening his eyes, then reconsiders.  Food’s coming; they’ll wake him for that.  Until then, he’s content to let the magic of Foggy’s apartment work on him.  He drifts along a warm, lazy river of sounds, smells, and textures, content to stand-down, to enjoy the fruits of a hard-won day, all the while knowing that if he falls – and he will fall.  That’s the Murdock motto, actually, “They Will Fall” – hell or high water, his friends will see that the Devil gets back up first.      

 

* * *

 

Happy reading!

           
         


	8. ...of Catholicism and a Concussion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Foggy springs up in bed. He’s been waiting for this call. The call where Foggy has to recite Liam Neeson’s speech from Taken and pray that the human traffiker/mass-murderer/psycho-criminal who’s holding Matt doesn’t call his bluff. 
> 
> “My name is Lantom,” Lantom, Lantom, Lantom…where the hell has Foggy heard the name before? He doesn’t come up with an answer before, “I’m Matthew’s Priest.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: the characters and concepts in this story are the property of Marvel and their related affiliates. This is an amateur writing effort meant for entertainment purposes only.
> 
> This chapter is for drewbug (ff.net; shyday on AO3), who is an authorial force to be reckoned with and requested a fic involving Matt bleeding in the church, Lantom, and a final detail that I just want to keep private for now. I really enjoyed penning this installment, not only because of the drama it demanded but because I found writing for Lantom fun. I hope I have done him justice here, as well as the prompt. Thank you!
> 
> There are elements in this installment that are blasphemous and some that reflect anti-Catholic sentiments. I sincerely apologize if anyone is offended. I don’t mean for my impact to be negative and write with my tongue firmly in cheek on this one. 
> 
> To the readers: ah, you lovely folk. Thank you so much for the kind words, the support, and the encouragement. Thank you to those of you who leave reviews, who don’t leave reviews, who click the link by accident. I hope you are finding everything that you are looking for.

* * *

 

...of Catholicism and a Concussion

 

Foggy doesn’t know how many times the phone rings before he finally gets to it.  Matt might be able to function at 3 am, but Foggy’s still running on normal, human hours instead of vigilante time.  “You just got your cast off yesterday!” he moans in greeting.  “You can’t have gotten yourself injured again.”  

          The unfamiliar voice on the other line suggests something much, much worse than further injury, “Unfortunately he has, so long as we’re both talking about Matthew Murdock.”

          Foggy springs up in bed.  He’s been waiting for this call.  Well, not this call specifically, but a call just like it.  The call that’s worse than “I just fell down a manhole” or “Some guy broke a bottle on my back”.  The call where Matt’s been taken hostage.  The call where his identity’s been exposed.  The call where Foggy has to recite Liam Neeson’s speech from _Taken_ and pray that the human traffiker/mass-murderer/psycho-criminal who’s holding Matt doesn’t call his bluff. 

          Damn it!  Why can he never remember the first lines to that monologue where it’s really important?  Foggy’s mouth goes dry.  He ventures what he thinks is a dumb question (albeit a necessary one), “Who is this?”

          He’s expecting something shady like, “I’m your worst nightmare.”  The voice on the other line has a brittle edge.  It cuts through the ether like a jagged blade.  “My name is Lantom,” Lantom, Lantom, Lantom…where the hell has Foggy heard the name before?  He doesn’t come up with an answer before, “I’m Matthew’s Priest.  He uh…he’s here with me at the parish.  He’s taken a hard whack to the head and came to just long enough to get me to call you.”

          Foggy kicks off his blankets and grabs the first pair of pants he finds.  They’re Marci’s skinny jeans, they get stuck on his ankles, and he spends the next precious moments of the conversation grunting awkwardly to get them off.  His own pants are not far from hers.  “I’m on my way,” Foggy grabs his duffel on his way out the door too, “but you should probably call Claire Temple just in case Matt didn’t say so.  She’s a nurse.”

          “Will do.”  
          Foggy doesn’t know what to say next: what’s being a Priest like?  Is the vow of chastity hard?  Did you just pick up on my double entendre there?  Lantom doesn’t give him the opportunity to test out any of his fantastic conversation starters.  “I’ll see you soon,” he says, and then hangs up.

          Obviously, Foggy remembers Liam Neeson’s speech the second the line goes dead.  “Another time,” he sighs. 

 

* * *

 

          Foggy wonders if there’s a particular decorum to meetings with a Priest.  He doesn’t know why.  Sure, he worries himself sick about Matt on the way to the church, but his brain has a funny way of dealing with stress.  Foggy evades.  He gives himself two seconds to think about Matt’s head injury and then finds himself curious as to whether Lantom will be wearing his habit.  Robes.  Whatever.

          The cab driver drops him off at the front entrance, and Foggy gets out before he has the good sense to know that this isn’t where Lantom is.  Priests don’t actually live in the church.  They actually room nearby – a priestery?  Monastery?  All that time not thinking about Matt’s religion, and now that it actually matters, Foggy has to wander around the sides of the church looking for a building he doesn’t even know the name of.

          His phone buzzes in his pocket.  Matt’s burner again.  Lantom starts speaking the second the line connects, “There’s a side door.”

          Foggy backtracks.  The side of the church is cloaked in darkness, but if he squints, he can make out a pale face in an open doorway.  “Is that you being creepy?”  
  
          Sigh.  “Yes, that’s me.  Is that you just standing there in the street?”  
  
          He hangs up.  Trust Matthew to find the sassy Priest.  Or maybe they’re all sassy in the Catholic Church.

          Foggy trots up the steps to the entryway and is ushered inside by Lantom, who is not at all what Foggy expects.  The voice on the phone made him think Clint Eastwood: six foot tall, lean, mean, soul-saving machine.  Lantom is a slight old man with sharp features, and Foggy’s about to turn his expectations into a joke when he meets the Priest’s gaze.  Lantom might not have Dirty Harry’s physique, but he’s got eyes that have seen some things.  Lantom has advanced degrees in the worst aspects of human nature.  He has written a dissertation on evil, and if you ask him about it, he will tell you _everything_.  All the terrifying details.

          So Foggy clams up.  There’s decorum with Priests, etiquette, politesse.  “Bless me, Father,” it pops out of his moth before he can stop it. 

          Lantom gets it, “Not a Catholic, are you?”  
  
          “Raised Anglican.”  
  
          “Close enough,” he shuts the door and flicks his flashlight back on.  The gloss of the hardwood helps illuminate the expanse of chambers beyond the foyer.  Lantom moves quietly towards the furthest room.  His dressing gown blends easily with the shadows in the church, and it doesn’t have a white collar or a papal seal.  He’s also not wearing a giant Pope hat.  In other words, he looks like any other elderly gent at 3 am. 

          Foggy is a little underwhelmed. 

          “I didn’t want to turn the lights on in case he was being followed,” Lantom says by way of apology.  “So far, it’s been quiet.”

          “Does he always stop in for late night visits?”  
  
          “No, never, but there were some sirens a few blocks over that he might have been responsible for,” Lantom replies.  “I saw him slip in through the back door from the rectory.  I was glad I didn’t call for backup before I knew who it was.  Initially thought it was some dumb kid in a devil costume. 

          “I told him those horns were overkill.”

          “Well,” Lantom shrugs.  The change in his demeanour is evident to Foggy no matter how dark it is, because Lantom is the sort of guy who isn’t easily embarrassed.  “Those horns were certainly overkill tonight.”

          They round a corner into the main chamber, where rows of glossy pews and haunting statues greet Foggy.  There’s a lot more pomp in here than his family’s church: stained glass windows, ornate carvings, a massive alter that opens up like a private heaven.  The big stand out is the guy in body armour lying prostrate on the steps by the baptismal font.  His blood’s not visible on the red carpet, but Foggy can smell it.  He knows that Lantom’s not getting the jacket balled up under Matt’s head back. 

          Foggy tosses his bag aside, kneels down, and gives Matt’s cheeks a pat.  “Hey?  Matt?  You there, buddy?”  He reaches too far back and ends up with a handful of blood.  Uh oh.  “Did you get a hold of Claire?”  
  
          “Working, unfortunately, but she gave me some pointers.  I learned a few things doing mission work too.  Can you help me get him to the rectory?”

          “I think you underestimate how much this guy weighs,” Foggy’s back is still recovering from helping Matt out of the manhole.  Lantom’s embarrassment has come back though, coupled this time with something more dangerous: guilt, for him and for Foggy.  Bloody Catholics…  “But yeah, I guess.  I’m just going to see if I can get him conscious, because if not, we should just call an ambulance.  Matt?  Hey, Matt, can you hear me?”

          Nothing.  Matt’s down for the count.  Foggy wishes that for once his friend could do something the easy way.  He pulls out his cell phone and says, louder, “Okay, I guess I have to call the ambulance…”  He cranks the volume, holds his phone right up to Matt’s ear, and dials. 

          “Oh, come on, Matt!” the last time he tried that, Matt nearly took his head off.  Now, he just keeps on lying there, eyes closed, mouth open, bleeding…and not just from his head.  Foggy runs a hand over his side where there’s a deep rip.  A ragged trench just under Matt’s ribcage.  The bleeding’s mostly stopped, but that doesn’t make Foggy happier.  He’s watched enough cop shows to know that’s a bullet wound. 

          He checks the head wound again.  It’s not a bullet wound, thankfully: blunt force trauma.  “Geez…” Foggy winces sympathetically.

          “Yeah, the ads for this flashlight said it could be used as a weapon.  I just didn’t realize how effective it was.”

          Foggy looks back at Lantom.  All the embarrassment the Priest has been exuding, that guilt, it’s not because Matt got beat up by the wrong people.  Well, not just because of that, anyways.  “You did that?”  
  
          Lantom tosses his shoulders, “I saw the devil coming into the house of God.”  
  
          “How did he…didn’t he hear you coming?” the old man’s pretty smooth, but Matt can pick up on smooth.  Foggy puts a hand on Matt’s shoulder.  The only explanation he can think is that there’s more injuries, ones he can’t see.  Worse than knitting bullet wounds or a probably concussion.  “Maybe we should call an ambulance.”

          And just like that, Matt’s awake.  Well, not awake.  But he’s making noise and his fist goes flying straight into Foggy’s face.

          “AH, JESUS!” Foggy jumps out of the way.  His cheek starts to swell immediately.  “GOD DAMN IT, MATT!”

          Matt’s not listening.  He’s just writhing around on the floor like a fish out of water, fists flying in uncoordinated attacks while he scrambles towards the wall.  He ends up thrashing under the statue of Mary.  His breath is coming in wheezes, which just makes the sight more gut-wrenching.  Calm, composed Matt reduced to fumbling madly in the dark, blind eyes searching for images that won’t ever appear. 

           Foggy prods at his cheek and gets a good look at Lantom hovering a safe distance from Matt’s attacks.  “Sorry, Father,” he says, “for the blasphemy.”  
  
          Lantom nods to Foggy’s cheek, “I think the Lord’ll give you a pass on that one.”

          Conscience clear, Foggy returns his attention to Matt, who has suddenly gone still.  He keeps his hands outstretched in the dark.  “Father?” he asks. 

          “Yes, Matthew.”

          Something’s wrong.  Something’s very wrong.  Matt’s bottom lip isn’t supposed to do that.  His eyes shouldn’t be that glassy either.  They gleam under Lantom’s light.  Matt lowers his arms slightly, wheezing all the while. 

          His next word is barely a whisper.  “…Dad?”

          Lantom looks at Foggy, who is looking at Lantom, because both are at a loss of what to do.  Matt makes the decision for them.  His arms fall to the floor.  His mouth breaks open in a cry, and tears run in rivers down his cheeks.  “Your heart’s…your heart’s beating…”

          Then he’s quiet, and the quiet is worse, because even on the peripheries of the flashlight beam, Foggy can see Matt isn’t just weeping.  He’s sobbing.  Foggy really has to work at Holding It Together, lest he turn to mush too. 

          Lantom lowers so that he’s at eye level with Matt.  The act is instinctual, because it’s not like Matt can see him.  “Matthew, do you know where you are?” he asks. 

          Matt ignores him.  “I’m…I’m sorry…I am so, so sorry.”

          No doubt he gets this a lot, Catholic guilt being what it is.  Lantom accepts Matt’s apology with a sympathetic nod, “I forgive you, Matthew.  Now, can you tell me where you are?”  

          The words don’t register.  Matt’s still weeping, still collapsing in on himself.  “I shouldn’t have said anything.  You should’ve…you should’ve just gone down in the fifth like they said.  Should’ve just gone down…”

          He’s going down too.  Eyes back-flipping to white in their sockets.  Muscles going slack.  Foggy throws caution to the wind and catches Matt before he can hit the floor.  The fight’s left him.  He slumps bonelessly against Foggy’s shoulders and only moves to pound his fists into Foggy’s back with ever diminishing strength, the tears claiming what little energy he had.  “I was a dumb kid.  I was just a dumb kid…”

          The rest of what he’s saying disintegrates into sobs.  Foggy tightens his grip.  “It’s okay, Matt,” he tucks one hand against the wound on Matt’s side, the one that has reopened with a vengeance.  “It’s okay.”

          Lantom drifts over to where the two men are hugging.  Foggy starts to sway in hopes that the motion will calm Matt down, but Matt shows no signs of calming.  He’s been holding back these tears for too long.  “Matthew,” Lantom brings his hand to rest on Matt’s shoulder, “You are not responsible for your father’s death.  Do you understand?  Matthew?”  
  
          “You were supposed to go down in the fifth, remember?” Matt lifts his face from Foggy’s shoulder.  “You were supposed to, and I read Thurgood Marshall at you until…until you decided to go for a knockout.  And then you were in an alley, wrapped up around a bullet, because I wanted you to be a hero.  And you already were a hero.”

          He falls back against the wall again, defeated.  The confession hanging in the air between the three men.  Foggy can’t lift his eyes from the floor.  One more piece of Matt Murdock that he’s never known. 

          Matt’s breath shudders.  It’s the only thing in the room more fragile than he is.  Until he utters, “If I never said anything, you would…you would still be here.”  Then that realization is the most fragile thing in the room.

          Lantom thinks hard about what to say next.  He inches closer to Matt and offers, “You can’t know that.  When and where we die is not for us to say.”  
  
          “But you would have survived that night if I had let you fall.”

          “Matthew, do you know why I was in the alley that night?  Why that alley out of all the other alleys in Hell’s Kitchen?” the words are coming so quickly to Lantom, Foggy’s wondering if he’s rehearsed.  “It’s because that alleyway was on the way home to you, and I wanted to see you one last time.  I didn’t stay up in the fifth because you told me to.  I didn’t do it for Thurgood Marshall either.  I won that fight because I wanted to be worthy of a son like you.  And I…”

          The weight of what Lantom’s doing, of the pronouns he’s using and the identity he’s assumed, finally hits him, paralyzing his tongue for a long, heart-wrenching moment.  Both Matt and Foggy sit in rapt attention, but only Foggy has tears in his eyes now.  Jesus, Matt didn’t tell him any of this.  Nothing.  Not in all the years they’ve known each other.  Sure, he knew Battlin’ Jack got murdered, but he had no idea that Matt carried around responsibility over it.  Catholic guilt, definitely, but not this.  Nothing like this.  

          Lantom decides to see through his charade to the end, “There are people in this city who didn’t want me to be the father you deserved, so I got to die as the hero you always knew I could be.”

          Matt breaks, “I didn’t need that.  I didn’t need any of it.  I just needed you.”

          “I know.  I know, Matthew…” Lantom sighs.  He’s backed himself into a corner.  “It’s not fair, it’s not right, and none of this gets any easier.  But your father loved you.”

          The trump card sucks the last, panicked breath from Matt’s chest.  He folds forward without inhaling, and Foggy’s worried that he’s having a worse fit until his chest finally expands.  Matt’s hand eventually rises off the floor and reaches to where Lantom is kneeling.  Lantom takes Matt’s hand in his and holds it tightly. 

          Foggy is so transfixed that he misses Matt’s other hand reaching for him and catched a finger in the eye.  “Oh, for the love of…” he stops himself, “Gosh.”  He wraps his hand around Matt’s. 

          “Nice save,” Lantom mutters. 

          All eyes go back to Matt, who’s still keeled over.  “You still with us?” Foggy asks.  He guesses for accuracy he should have said, “Are you actually with us?” but that’s asking a lot.  Foggy’s barely with them.  He’s still reeling from the revelation about Battlin’ Jack. 

          Matt responds by bobbing his head up and down.  He’s a ship taking on water; Foggy keeps expecting him to sink.  He surprises everyone by lifting himself into a sitting position, eyes closed, tears drying in rivulets on his cheeks.  Conscious just enough to utter, “My head _really_ hurts.”

          Foggy takes that as a win.  He wipes his own cheeks.  “Yeah, I bet.  Can you stay awake for a minute though?”  
  
          “Hm.”

          “Matt?” Foggy shakes him.  “Matt, stay with me, okay?  We gotta get you out of here.”

          Matt’s eyes open blearily.  They keep circling the room in what Foggy assumes must be a perfect expression of his consciousness.  “I thought I took care of those guys…”

          Foggy plays along, “Yeah, well, so did we, but you didn’t.  So can you walk?  We’ve got someplace safe not far from here.”  
  
          Under normal circumstances, watching Matt dressed as Daredevil failing utterly at something as simple as standing up would be comical as hell.  The fact that he’s super-concussed, bleeding heavily, and fresh from a breakdown about his own father’s murder belies the humour in the situation.  Foggy can’t break a smile even though Matt clearly believes he’s uninjured.

          Okay, he breaks a little smile, but only after Matt ventures a confident step forward and then pitches down the steps.  He almost takes Lantom and Foggy with him.

          The cuteness is really gone when Matt starts puking. 

          Foggy blasphemes for the third time that night.  Lantom doesn’t say a word. 

 

* * *

 

          They get Matt to the couch in the rectory and absolutely no further.  Nevermind trying to explain Matt’s absence at work tomorrow to Karen: Foggy is going to have to explain why he’s developed a crook in his spine.  He doesn’t know what plausible lie can cover-up hauling an unconscious vigilante about a hundred feet and at least ten steps to safety. 

          Curtain’s drawn, Lantom risks lighting the room with one of the smaller lamps.  His sitting room has the same simple opulence of the church, but like Lantom, they’re a little more hardened.  He has Irish whiskey front and centre on the bar, trumping the finer bottles of Port and Cognac that Foggy can see haven’t been touched.  There are relics on the mantel from Africa, up to an including something Foggy can’t quite describe but is definitely intended for stabbing. 

          “You have a suture kit in that sack of yours?”  
  
          “Oh, do I have a suture kit,” Foggy is glad somebody asked.  He drops the bag and starts digging through the first aid supplies.  “I think the better question is can you do stitches?  Because I can’t.”

          “Your hands’ll be steadier than mine.”  
  
          “Steadiness has nothing to do with it, I assure you,” Foggy replies.  He rolls Matt onto his uninjured side and unzips the body armour.  He uncovers Matt’s garden of scars, most of them neat and orderly from Claire’s careful ministrations.  The one exception is Foggy’s handiwork, the jagged, puffy monstrosity under Matt’s shoulder that never stood a chance to heal properly.  “For his sake, Father, I think you better do the honours.”  
  
          “I suppose I’ll be better at that than I will holding him down,” Lantom concedes.

          Foggy curses under his breath.  Stitching won’t be as difficult as restraining Matt.  Clearly, the good Lord is testing him for all that blaspheming.  Catholic-God really is a vengeful-

          He mentally blasphemes a whole lot more.

          Lantom disappears for a second, muttering something about ice for Matt’s head.  Foggy busies himself with laying a towel, threading the needle, and trying not to think about the fact that Matt feels responsible for his dad’s death.  He succeeds at two out of the three.  Foggy can’t look his friend in the face lest he catches sight of those tear streaks.  That vacant look on Matt’s face doesn’t make up for the broken, mangled expression he wore in the church. 

          Foggy doesn’t last.  He ends up with Matt’s hand in his and wonders.  Ruminates.  Comes at last to a conclusion he made the night he found out about Matt’s secret identity: _what the hell do I know about Matt Murdock?_

“Not a whole hell of a lot,” Lantom intones as he lifts Matt’s head and slips a back of frozen vegetables under it.  A tea towel keeps the cold from biting at his head wound.

          “How the…?” Foggy stares at him in wonder.  Catholic-God?  Is that you?

          “I said: what can we do for his head wound?  Answer: not a whole hell of a lot.”  
  
          Foggy points at him, “You just said hell.”  
  
          “I hope the good Lord has more important things to deal with right now, like making sure Matthew doesn’t wake up for this.  I’ve got stronger stuff than whiskey to give him, but I don’t want to chance it.  Not when he’s as concussed as I think he is…”

          There’s the guilt and embarrassment, just in time for Lantom to take the gloves, needle, and forceps that Foggy’s offering before setting to work.  At first, Foggy hovers around Matt’s arms, but when it’s clear Matt’s not waking up, he gets transferred to holding the lamp. 

          Lantom’s sutures are not Claire’s, but they are better than Foggy’s.  They seal up the graze on Matt’s side like a row of little soldiers of varying heights.  Matt stays out for all of it.  His muscles don’t even flex in response.  Foggy has a lot of time to watch him while holding the lamp, but it’s only when Lantom tapes down the dressing that Foggy really sees Matt.  See the grayish tinge to his skin, the slashes of scar tissue criss-crossing his chest, the perspiration pooling in his collarbones.  Not a trace of guilt or guile, not here and now or any other time for that matter.  Matt’s hiding his biggest scars too deep.  He’s wrapped them up in tape, gloves, and body armour. 

          Lantom finishes taping up the gauze over Matt’s side and removes his gloves.  “We should wake him up again.  It’s been an hour.”

          Foggy nods dumbly.  He wants to say something snide, but he doesn’t have the heart for it.  Getting pissed at Matt for not telling him about the mask is justifiable.  Getting pissed at him for not admitting feeling responsible for his dad’s death seems like a dick move. 

          “Matt,” he shakes Matt by the shoulder, “Buddy, come on, wake up.”  
  
          It could be the cold, the head injury, the sob-fest in the church, the fact that he’s no longer bleeding to death, or all of the above, but when Matt’s eyes do open, he doesn’t swing punches.  He’s startled, sure, but then he immediately scans the room with his senses, not his fists. 

          “Foggy.  Foggy, where are we?”  
  
          “We’re in the priestery.”  
  
          “Rectory,” Lantom corrects him.

          “Father,” Matt drains out of himself for a second – face loosening, eyelids fluttering – like someone just pulled his plug.

          Foggy shakes him, bringing him back to lucidity.  “Matt, you have to stay awake just a little longer.  You took a pretty big hit to the back of the head.”

          Lantom sighs, “Matthew, I’m so sorry.”  
  
          Matt’s brow furrows, “What for?  What happened?  Agh, geez…” His curiosity encourages him to lean forward, which causes his new stitches to pull. 

          “Lie still,” Foggy is not comforted when Matt actually listens to him.  That flashlight really did a number on him.  “You were in the church.  Do you remember?”

          “No.  Sorry,” Matt shifts his head to a better angle against the bag of frozen peas.  His eyes start to close again, and he proceeds to use all the wrong vowel sounds when trying to say that he doesn’t remember. 

          Another shake.  Matt starts up again like a wind-up toy.  “I don’t remember…” the vowel sounds are correct this time, barely.  “I thought I heard someone.”

          “Me, Matthew.  You heard me.  I was in the church.”

          Foggy doesn’t let Lantom finish, “He saved your life!”  
  
          “Ugh…volume, Foggy.”

          “Sorry,” he quiets his tone.  “There was a big guy.  Ninja-like.  Clobbered you, Matt.  Good thing Lantom was there to take care of him.”  
  
          Lantom sighs and shakes his head.  “It was me, Matthew.  I hit you.  Your friend is nice enough to commit a mortal sin to save my pride.  But it was me, and I’m sorry.”

          Matt exhales and starts to sink again, “It’s okay, Father.”  
  
          “No, it isn’t,” Lantom pats his forearm.

          Whatever Matt tries to say next comes out all jumbled.  Foggy prompts him, “Try again.”  
  
          His eyelids are open just enough to prove that he’s awake, but Matt’s eyes keep flitting upwards into his sockets.  “I’m really, really concussed right now,” he admits.  Then his eyelids close.  “I’m not going to remember any of this…”

          And he doesn’t.     

 

* * *

 

          Every hour after that, Foggy has – almost word for word - the following conversation with Matt:   
    
          “Whoa, Matt, calm down.  It’s me.”

          “Foggy?”

          “Yeah.”  
  
          “Where are we?”  
  
          “We’re at the rectory.  You were at the church last night.  Do you remember?”

          “No.  Sorry.  What was I doing at the church?”

          “I don’t know.  You have this gash in your side.  Maybe you were looking for a place to lie low.”  
  
          “That…sounds plausible.”

          Matt then tries to inspect the wound but can’t figure out where his hand is in relation to his chest.  It’s funnier the more times Foggy has to have the conversation, because he’s growing more and more confident that Matt’s going to make it. 

          “Did I call you?”   

          “Lantom called me,” Foggy admits. 

          “Is Lantom okay?”  
  
          “Yes, he’s fine.” 

          "Are you okay?" 

          Sigh... "Yes." 

          “Good.”  
  
          Lather, rinse, repeat.

          Finally, just a little before noon, Matt wakes up without thrashing.  Foggy almost doesn’t notice; he’s falling asleep on the love seat when he sees Matt’s hands gently rise from the blankets to probe his wounds.  The effort is coordinated, not sloppy. 

          He stops Matt from taking off the bandages and checking the injury.  His touch doesn’t startle Matt, a good sign considering how muddled Matt’s senses have been. “I’d like for you to not get an infection.”

          “Foggy-”

          “Yeah,” Foggy sits back on his couch and almost nods off, “We’re in the rectory.  You were in the church.  You got hit in the head after getting grazed by a bullet.  I’m fine, Lantom’s fine, you’re fine.”

          His cheek is decidedly not fine, but Foggy really doesn’t want to lay that on Matt.  He’s taking long enough to catch up with the conversation as it is.  “That’s a lot of information to take in,” he sighs.  
  
          “Well, we’ve had a lot of chats about it.”

          “I don’t remember.  Sor-”

          “No: no more apologies.  You have lost your apology privileges after tonight.  You are never allowed to say sorry ever again.”

          Matt is reluctantly silent.  He purses his lips, holding fast against the apology filling his mouth.  “How long was I out?” he asks instead.

          “Are you even ‘in’ this time?”

          “I think so.  I feel ‘in’.”

          “Oh, yeah?” Foggy sits up to rouse himself, hoping that Matt’s lucidity isn’t short lived.  The colour’s returned to Matt’s skin, and his movements and expressions are no longer sluggish.  He’s responsive to Foggy’s movements, to the aspects of the room that only his senses perceive.  “What do you remember about last night?”  
  
          Matt swallows.  His gaze fixes on the ceiling, another good sign.  “I broke up a group of petty thieves.  One of them pulled a gun before I could…before I could stop him, but I remember the cops arriving.  I got to the streets, needed a place to stop the bleeding, and I…” he stops.  Scrolls back.  “I wasn’t alone in the church.  Someone was there.”  
          “Yes.”  
  
          “Lantom?”

          “Yes.”  
  
          “That’s it, that’s all I remember.”

          Foggy nods.  It’s just as well.  He lays back.   

          “What is it?”  
  
          “It’s nothing.”

          Matt’s straining: consciousness or Foggy, he can’t keep a hold on both when one’s keeping secrets and the other’s telling lies, “Something’s wrong.”

          There’s only one way he could possibly know that: “You promised not to listen to my heart.”

          “It’s not just your heart.  It’s your everything.  I lived with you, Foggy.  I learned how to read you by your temperature and your smell and all the other ways you react.  I can’t just turn that off.  I want to, and I’ve tried, but I can’t.  Not after all these years.”

          “All these years,” Foggy muses.  He drags a weary finger over the upholstery.  “All these years, and you know me better than I know myself.  But there’s so much I still don’t know about you.”

          He knows Matt well enough to know that’s fear in his friend’s voice.  Matt doesn’t want to ask, but he has to, “What happened last night, Foggy?”

          There’s no point in trying to lie.  He tries an evasive maneuver, “Just leave it alone, Matt.”

          “Foggy, please,” sadness overwhelms his fear.  Matt tugs the blanket a little more tightly around his chest.  “I know that I have screwed this up by not telling you about the mask.  I swear I’m not trying to keep things from you anymore.  Please give me a chance to make it right.”  
  
          “You haven’t screwed this up,” Foggy says, feeling like a right asshole.  At least about last night.  “I mean you should have told me about the mask thing, but you deserve to have some secrets.  Even if I want you to feel like you can tell me anything.”  
  
          “I feel that way.  I don’t always show it, but I do.”  
  
          Foggy searches the room for something to take his mind off this train wreck of a conversation.  His eyes land on the bleeding corpse of Christ hanging from the cross, then the pewter statue of a burning heart, and though he was raised in a household where ‘papist’ was a curse word, the guilt eats him alive.  He looks back to Matt, “You thought Lantom was your dad last night.”

          Without his glasses, Matt’s face seems open, vulnerable, sometimes uncomfortably so.  Times like now, when words have knocked the wind clean out of him and he’s trying to figure out how to breathe, think, and respond at the same time.  “Did I say…” he stops himself, corrects his line of thinking.  Of course he said something.  Matt knows he said something.  “What did I say?”

          There’s a hopeful twist to that final syllable.  Matt’s voice goes up a pitch.  He wants to not have said something important. 

          Foggy can give him that so long as, “Can you hear my heart beating right now?”

          _Please say no, please say no, please say no…_

          “No.”

          “Liar.”

          “I’m sorry.”

          Foggy hates this.  Hates not being able to tell his friend a comfortable lie.  “You said you were sorry last night too: sorry that you were the reason he died.”  He rubs his eyes.  There are tears from fatigue, undirected rage, and tragedy, “Happy?”

          Matt screws his eyes and lips up tight.  He shakes his head, is in pain, and then has to lie there, frozen in mute anguish.  When his mouth opens again, Foggy knows what’s coming and stop him, “You didn’t do anything wrong, Matt.  You had every right to keep this from me.  I wish you wouldn’t, but…but you had every right.”   

          “Can I explain?”

          “There’s nothing to explain.”

          Matt goes on, “I only ever told the man who trained me, and he made me feel like hell just for thinking it.  I mean it sounds ridiculous, Foggy.  I know I didn’t kill my dad.”

          Foggy doesn’t need super senses to know what Matt’s heart is doing.  He can see the muscles straining on his face to hold himself together, “That doesn’t stop me from feeling like I did though.” 

          “You don’t have to tell me,” but Foggy’s paying close attention to what his heart’s doing, and he wants Matt to tell him.  Correction: he wants Matt to unburden himself.  To share the weight.

          Matt knows.  He lets his eyelids hang lower, lets himself show the kind of peace that comes by not being alone.  “I don’t keep stuff like this from you because I don’t trust you, Foggy.  You just don’t deserve all the devils I’ve got locked up inside.”

          “It’s not about what I deserve.  You’re my best friend, Matt.”

          “I’m your only friend, Foggy.”  
          “Hey!  I’m friends with Karen!”

          “I think we’re her only friends too,” Matt chuckles. 

          “Yeah, that’s true.  Us friendless wonders have to stick together.”

          “Yeah, we do,” Matt’s eyes are completely closed now.  His breathing’s starting to even out.  Foggy anticipates him nodding off, but Matt surprises him by dreamily adding, “You’re my only friend too, Foggy.”  
  
          Foggy lets himself start to fall asleep with that thought.  “Thanks, buddy.  And look, you are entitled to keep some things to yourself.”  
  
          “I don’t want to anymore, not from you.  Old habits just die hard, I guess.”

          “Can you remember this conversation,” Foggy begs, his eyes closing, “please?”

          “I can try,” Matt admits tiredly.

          “That’s all I’ve ever needed.”

 

* * *

 

          Fingers on his wrist, hand on his brow, fresh ice on the back of his skull: Matt has trouble cataloguing his other sensory perceptions beyond those three facts from the dull ache in his head.  He knows better than to try and move.  Moving will agitate the truce his body’s maintaining with his head injury. 

          When he does cycle through the sounds and smells of the room, he’s content to know where he is, that Foggy and Lantom are nearby, and that he remembers his last conversation, albeit dimly.

          His life is a collection of holy trinities lately, a sure sign that he’s finally getting it right.

          Lantom’s hands withdraw from his wrist and forehead.  “I can’t tell you how sorry I am about your head,” he says by way of greeting.

          “Wasn’t your fault, Father.”  
  
          “Huh,” Lantom doesn’t bother finishing that laugh.  Matt wants to ask why, but the way Lantom’s heart trudges through the next couple beats suggests it’s a conversation for another time.  “Is there anyone in Hell’s Kitchen that doesn’t know your secret identity?”  
  
          “There are some questions better left unanswered,” he says. 

          “I think that one’s pretty important.”  
  
          Matt still doesn’t want to know.  There can’t be many.  “Thank you, Father, for everything.  You didn’t have to do this.”  
  
          “You’ll find out I did, Matthew, and not just because of my sacrament, though I am grateful for the help.  Cleaning vomit out of the church carpeting is one thing.  Dragging you into the house by myself is quite another.  You’re lucky your friend came.”

          Matt isn’t sure how much Lantom has deduced about Foggy and his recent fight, but he tries to let the Priest know how lucky he is with his tone, “Yeah, I am.”

          Lantom’s pulse is doing funny things, a foxtrot followed by a patient two-step, “Matthew, I know that you probably don’t remember what happened in the church last night, but I feel like you deserve to know.”  
  
          “Foggy told me,” he speaks too quickly to sound nonchalant, and Lantom’s too damn calm to give an indication that he knows.  Matt tries to deflect, “And no, I don’t remember.”  So let’s not talk about it.

          “Well, I feel like there’s something you should remember.”  
  
          “Father.” Please don’t. 

          Lantom’s hand is too warm on his.  Matthew almost pulls away, but he can’t deny his Priest a simple gesture.  He braces himself in Lantom’s grip.

          Something happens in the silence, something Matt’s senses register but that he can’t articulate.  There’s a shift: like the currents of air change or the temperature drops except that they don’t.  Nothing happens per se, but Matt feels something.  Lantom’s pulse, hammering against Matt’s hand, slows.  His breathing changes.  His posture shifts by degrees in ways that Matt can’t construct into a clear image.  He feels like the conversation is taking place between them without words, comfortably, and everything that needs to be said is uttered in that instant just with a hand on his. 

          Lantom rubs his knuckles, then withdraws his hand.  “I’m sorry about your father, Matthew.”  
  
          Matt swallows the lump in his throat and blinks back his tears, “I’m sorry too, Father.” 

* * *

 

 

 

Happy reading!


	9. ...Matt Gets Sick

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Matt, this is my apartment. You’re at my apartment. And, geez, you’re on fire.”   
> “The world-”  
> “No, Matt, you. You’re on fire. You are burning up,”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: the characters and concepts in this story are the property of Marvel and their related affiliates. This is an amateur writing effort meant for entertainment purposes only.
> 
> This is hell week for me as a teacher. Report cards! That meant long evenings at the school almost every day this week. I was so desperate to get this chapter posted but had almost no time to write, which didn’t help when I hit a wall with one part of this prompt. Luckily, I am in the home stretch with work, so here it is! I hope you all enjoy it. I definitely did. 
> 
> Thank you to pi-on-a-skateboard who requested a sick Matt being bedridden, spoon fed, and watching crappy television (as narrated by Foggy). I really hope you like this. It was truly a labour of love. 
> 
> Readers, oh, readers: last chapter was the highest reviewed! Thank you all so much for the kind support. I am overjoyed you liked it so much!

* * *

 

...Matt Gets Sick

 

            ...and they’re going to kill him.  Of course, they’re going to kill him.  Foggy’s only importance is smoking the Devil out, and once the Devil emerges, they’ll have no use for him so they’re going to kill Foggy going to kill Foggy going to kill Foggy going to kill...

            There are ten of them.  Eleven of them?  Heartbeats slowed to a rhythmic crawl.  Respiration for sleeping.  It might be the shoddiest security the Mask’s ever encountered.  Then again, Foggy’s out too.  Tucked up in a room that he’s been in so long it smells like Foggy.  This is too easy.  Something’s wrong.  Trap?  Is this a trap?  Matt listens: security’s scattered throughout the building in different rooms.  No trap is this poorly organized.

            Unless they’re not worried about him getting Foggy out.  Foggy might be hurt.  Foggy might be dying.  Foggy might be a lot of things and all of them are bad.  Bad, bleeding, bone.  Bones breaking.  Foggy’s bones are broken. 

            Matt tries to catch his breath, but the air is a solid object.  He inhales a brick of it at a time and none of it absorbs.  Just sits there in his chest, another brick on the wall.  Maybe he shouldn’t call the police.  He’s not going to be able to help Foggy when his legs are starting to give out beneath him and his GI tract is doing laps in his abdomen.

             He reaches for his phone.  Doesn’t find it.  Can’t find it because he doesn’t have it, and he would know if he had it.  There are not a lot of places to hide a cell phone in what he’s wearing.  There’s no calling the cops then.  Matt is actually Foggy’s only hope. 

            Strangely enough, for a guy who can’t breathe, inertia makes it easier to concentrate.  Matt’s a shark in the water.  One minute he’s struggling to find his feet under his churning body; the next he’s broken the latch on the door and is stumbling down the first few steps into the building.

            He’s coming.  He’s coming, Foggy.  Just hang on a little longer. 

            No one stirs, at least not that Matt can hear, even as he tumbles down the last few steps into hell.  This is hell, right?  It has to be.  My but the world on fire is hot tonight.  Matt’s skin oozes and blisters in the heat.  Tiny pyres ignite in all of his joints, causing his right knee to give out.  He scrambles to find purchase on the wall, but his metacarpals have disappeared.  His hands are empty sacks.  They fumble along pointlessly as he navigates towards Foggy on the one leg that still works. 

            He grabs the door handle.  Locked too, and this time Matt doesn’t have the strength to charge.  He rattles the door.  “Foggy,” he hisses.  “Foggy, it’s me.  Foggy, we have to go.”

            The heartbeat picks up a little.  Matt risks being a little louder.  “Foggy,” he says, and gives the door a good shake on its hinges.  “Come on, Foggy.”

            Linens shift.  Mattress squeaks.  Footsteps thunder down a short hallway, stop.  Thinking, thinking, and then the door swings open and Matt would go with it if his palms weren’t so sweaty.  The knob shoots out of his hand.  He sways on the spot.  “Foggy,” he’s overwhelmed with relief.  “You’re okay.”   
  
            Foggy is not relieved.  Frustrated is more like it.  Frustrated and…something else.  Something Matt has trouble hearing over the pounding in his joints.  “What are you doing here, Matt?”   
  
            All of a sudden the answer seems too wrong and too obvious.  “I’m here to rescue you.”  The silence that follows just amplifies Matt’s feelings that he’s made a mistake.  Where is he?  What is he doing here?  “I thought you were in trouble…”

            The frustration is gone and gets replaced by emotions with more terrifying implications. “Matt, do you know where you are?”   
  
            He tries to take stock, but all the things that made sense just a second ago don’t anymore.  Worse, he can’t remember what they meant when they did make sense.  There are about a dozen people around him at varying heights.  Foggy’s muggy with the scent of cotton sheets and sleep.  Matt’s joints ache, his head spins, his stomach’s dribbling away like a basketball in his chest, and he’s not wearing his mask.

            “Matt?”

            The sound of his own name brings him to his knees.  No, wait, he’s never had knees.  Never had legs.  He’s always been this puddle on the ground.  Foggy tries to grab him, and Matt slips straight through his fingers.  His torso’s viscous, just barely holding him together, all boneless and floppy.  “I’m here.  I’m here,” he hangs onto Foggy, who is traumatized but alive.  They didn’t kill him.  Matt got to him in time.  “I’m here, Foggy.  I’m going to…I’m going to get you out of here.”   
  
            “Matt, this is my apartment.  You’re at my apartment.  And, geez, you’re on fire.”   
  
            “The world-”

            “No, Matt, you.  You’re on fire.  You are burning up,” Foggy wraps him up in his arms and lifts him.  What’s left of Matt’s legs dangle beneath him, boneless sacks of melting skin.  “I’m calling an ambulance.  You need to go back to the hospital.”

            “Not safe…not safe there.  I had to get out.  I had to come find you.”   
  
            “Matt, you’re not thinking clearly.  You might be brain damaged: that’s how high your fever is.”   
  
            “You were in trouble.”

            “No, I’m fine.  You’re in trouble, Matt.”

            “Please, Foggy.  Please, just…please let me stay.  Please don’t send me back there.”

            “How did you get here, Matt?”

            “I don’t remember,” which isn’t exactly true.  Matt clarifies, “I remember the idea of coming here, I think.  I was…I was so sure you needed help.”   
  
            “You are the one who needs help, Matt,” Foggy moves around in his doorway, grabbing his keys and coat.   
  
            “No, no, can’t take me back,” Matt pushes himself out of the way as quick as his arms will carry him.  Foggy to catches him easily by looping an arm under his and over his shoulder blades.  Either the ceiling lowers or the floor rises, but Matt’s head does several loop-the-loops before it finds Foggy’s shoulder.  His stomach bobs somewhere around his collarbones, lost and alone.

            Matt swallows, trying to unwind his esophagus and guide his stomach back to where it came from.  For a second, he feels his body rearranging, allowing him to beg, “I don’t even have ankles right now, Foggy, please.”

            Then his stomach rises back to his throat and stays there, churning. 

            Foggy doesn’t notice, “We’ll get you new ankles at the hospital,”

            His stomach lurches.  Bile pools in the back of his throat.  Matt tugs on Foggy’s jacket, “I’m going to be sick.”   
  
            “You’re already sick.”

            “Foggy, I’m going to throw up on you.  Stop.  Stop, please stop.”

            He’s given a bannister to lean against while he heaves hot bricks in and out of his lungs, trying to subdue the restless churning in the back of his throat.  Several eternities pass before Matt feels like his head’s attached to his shoulders and his stomach is back where it belongs.  Then Foggy’s back at his arm, mostly-dragging Matt on a dizzying trek out of the oven and into a maelstrom.  He bounces along waves of drywall before his foot’s caught in a whirlpool.  His knees hit tile.  His arms hit porcelain.  His head drops forward and every organ in his body commits a mass exodus.  Only Matt can’t remember what they look like, so they register in his mind as the words themselves, as braille letters scrolling through his brain.  Claire narrates them as they spill out of his mouth: stomach, liver, kidneys, lungs, pancreas, spleen…

            Matt starts to sink out of himself, passing through his now vacant chest, down the paths left in his legs when his bones disappeared.  He ends up on Foggy’s tile floor, shaking with chills.  A pool of sweat, blood, and tears apologizing endlessly, “I’m sorry.  I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorrysorrysorry…”

            “Matt?”

            “Yeah?”   
  
            “Shut up.”

            He’s not the least bit offended.  The sound of his voice is pretty grating with the acoustics of this room being what they are.  “O-kay,” he sighs, rolling onto his side and tucking himself under his coat.  He’s only drifting for a second or two when something icy hits his forehead.  Matt recoils but fails, because Foggy is nothing if not determined right now.  He places a restraining hand on the back of Matt’s neck to keep his friend from moving out of the way. 

            “I’ll make you a deal.  Matt, you hear me?  I will make you a deal.”

            “Okay.”

            “I’m going to take your temperature, and if you are under 105 degrees, you can stay here.  If you are 105 degrees or over, I’m calling an ambulance.  Fair?”

            Matt forgets everything the second it’s been said.  The words go in one ear and out the other.  Still, he gets the sense like this is an easy question, and if he doesn’t answer it correctly, Foggy will definitely take him back to the hospital.  Back to more poking and prodding and monitors.  “Okay,” he says.

            He thinks that’s the correct answer until Foggy pokes him in the mouth.  Matt gags, “Ow.”

            “Close your mouth.”   
  
            “It tastes funny.”

            “You just puked.  Everything tastes funny.”   
  
            Matt can’t argue with that, and then he forgets what he was going to argue about.  He closes his mouth and pretends he’s not being stabbed under the tongue. 

            Loud beeping rouses him.  He tries to cover his ears, but his arms are too heavy.  Foggy removes the tongue stabber. 

            “Christ, Matt: 104.6.  You are less than half a degree away from your brain boiling inside your skull.”   
  
            “That’s the most important less than half a degree in my life right now.”  Hell if he can remember why though.

            “Stuff like that is why I should call the ambulance.”

            Matt can’t let that happen.  He plays his trump card, “I almost saved your life tonight, Foggy.”

            “From my apartment, Matt!  You escaped from a hospital and booked it across Hell’s Kitchen with a fever that’s so close to boiling your brain I’m amazed you can talk to save me from my apartment.” 

            “I was worried.  I was…I was terrified.”

            “That’s the fever.”

            “That doesn’t make me less terrified.”   
  
            “Can I take you back to the hospital, please?”

            “I’ll be quiet.  You won’t even…you won’t even know I’m here,” he places a finger against his lips to show Foggy how quiet he’s going to be.  Hits his nose, pokes himself in the eye.  Foggy stops him before he can reach his cornea.  “Super stealthy.”

            “Oh, my God,” Foggy says just before he walks away. 

            Matt takes that as a win and passes out.   

 

* * *

 

            He wakes up when he’s lifted from a pool of his own perspiration and propped upright against Foggy’s bath tub.  His head ends up balanced painfully on the rim of the tub.  Matt tries to lift it, but he can’t.  His skull is a cast iron stove.  Brain’s little better than hot coals. 

            The rest of his body follows suit: hot and achy, held together with joints of molten glass.  And his bones, oh, his bones: they’re like a middle school science experiment.  Matt remembers having to document the effects of vinegar on a chicken bone.  The damn thing ended up turning to rubber, kind of like his skeleton has now. 

            “You know, he won’t even remember going to the hospital right now,” Claire’s voice seems to come out of nowhere and echoes slightly.  Matt has to really work to find her with his senses.  He latches on to her smell first, then the clinical touch of her gloved hands on his bare arms.  She swabs his arm with alcohol, “You could just lie.”   
  
            Foggy’s further away, so he’s harder to read, “He’d know.  He always knows.  And at least when I didn’t know, I felt less guilty about it.”

            Claire’s fingers tap at his forearm.  Matt moans; he knows what’s coming next.  “I said no hospitals for a reason,” he mutters and tries to shift his arm out of the way.  The effort is wasted: his body’s not listening to him.   

            “If you would like to get fluids orally, you can be my guest, but I have a feeling you’re just going to end up making a mess of your friend’s bathroom again.”  Matt tries not to make a face, but the one thing his muscles want to do is express distaste for vomiting.  His abdominals cramp again in anticipation, like the worst triple dog dare ever.  Like bring it on, Murdock.  We’re natural born pukers. 

            “No?” Claire pulls his arm closer.  “Then let me do this.”   
  
            Pain twists the impressionist painting in his head into a dot before exploding into a great singularity of sensations.  He taste citrus and salt water.  A rush of pure ice shoots into his veins.  He pushes his head back until it dangles into the tub.  The saline drains into his skull and quells the burning inside.  The buzzing in his head quiets (he didn’t even know it was buzzing), and the bathroom reconstructs itself.  Claire’s kneeling beside him; Foggy’s looming in the doorway. 

            “Your breathing sounds funny,” Matt articulates at long last.

            Claire scoops his head up and draws it into a more comfortable position, “I’m wearing a mask.  This flu’s nasty.  Two people have died.”   
            “Which is why I’m happy I got my flu shot,” Foggy gloats.

            The saline helps Matt stay focused on the real argument, “They were senior citizens.”   
  
            “You’re Daredevil, and this bug is still kicking your ass.”

            “I’m not going to die.”   
  
            “No,” Claire notes, “but not for lack of trying.”  She fiddles with the tube attached to his arm.  “I’m giving you acetaminophen.  Should help bring your temperature down.  But if it doesn’t, you have to go back to the hospital.” 

            She finishes the injection.  Matt head fills with lazy tendrils of smoke and silk scarves.  He’s content, even in a pool of his own sweat, to just lie there, but Claire has other plans.  She grabs him right round the chest and heaves him up. 

            Matt’s aware enough now to appreciate his vertigo, to name the wild sensations he’s overcome by as he is draped against Claire in Foggy’s bathroom.  His brings his head to rest on her shoulder.  “I really was trying to save Foggy’s life tonight,” he tells her.  “I have earned the right to not go to the hospital.”

            Claire and Foggy both say something, and both of their somethings must be funny because someone laughs.  The words don’t register though.  Matt loses sounds next, then smell, then his bones are gone again but it’s okay, because Foggy’s got him on one side and Claire has him on the other.  His last thought is one of apology because he definitely drools on Claire’s shoulder as he’s dragged out of the room.

            Then he’s lost too.

 

* * *

 

            The night passes in a haze.  Matt gives up measuring time and focuses on events:  small, experimental sips of cold ginger ale; his tongue being stabbed routinely by a thermometer; broiling to death one minute under a blanket and then freezing without it the next; Claire and Foggy’s respective touches; her stern reminders that he’s okay, he’s safe and Foggy’s sarcastically informing him, “Quick, Matt, the President needs you!  He’s being attacked by the oval office!”

            “That’s not funny,” Claire remarks.  “He might actually try to get to Washington.”

            There’s a lot of tossing and turning; blanket on, blanket off; being cogent and not.  Matt lets it all pass through him, hoping none of it sticks to his long-term memory and being apathetic when some of it does.  Mostly, he just drifts.   

            Eventually, a patch of warmth on his cheek suggests sunrise.  The hands fumbling at his foreman are attached to a mouth whose breaths have a slight echo.  Matt wants to tell Claire that she kind of sounds like Darth Vader, but no sooner has she removed the IV and staunched the blood than Claire lets her gloved hand soothe over his skin.  She causes the ache in his elbow and wrist to disperse, a small mercy, and Matt follows the gesture like he’s riding an outgoing tide. 

            He think she says something, but he’s too distracted to pay attention.  Her hand keeps sweeping back and forth, back and forth, until Matt slips away again. 

           

* * *

 

            Foggy’s stabbing under his tongue again. 

            Matt moans.  He moans because his tongue hurts, his body hurts, his head hurts: everything hurts with the kind of acuity that only super-senses can offer.   “Don’t wake up, don’t wake up,” Foggy begs.  “Just go back to sleep, Matt.  And keep your lips closed.”   
  
            He wants to tell Foggy about the aching, about his blood being so thick that his thinks his veins might burst from the pressure.  About the coal mine in his skull and all the itty-bitty coal miners going at his brain with pickaxes and dynamite.  All that comes out his mouth is another moan though, and his moan is weak, crackly, like a dying man’s last breath.

            The beeping makes Matt finally pull his head away.  No use cooperating when Foggy’s making his ears bleed.  His friend apologizes by replacing the thermometer with a straw.  Cool, sparkling, gingery air brushes over Matt’s face.  He manages a few small sips, then Foggy pulls the cup away again. 

            His voice, even after the drink, is barely a whisper.  “What time is it?”

            Foggy draws the blanket more tightly around his shoulders and neck, “A little after 3 in the afternoon.”   
  
            “Hospital?” 

            He means to ask a whole question – whether or not he needs to go to the hospital – but the words aren’t there.  Nothing’s there.  Thoughts on vacay.  Be back later, Matthew. 

            Foggy is able to parse through the question as best he can with all the information he has, “No, Matt, you’re still at my apartment.”

            “I got that,” Matt rasps.  All he can smell is Mama Nelson’s house from the sofa cushion under his face.  Stale cigarette smoke, cured meats, and Christmas scented candles: that’s what Foggy’s childhood is made of.  Matt doesn’t find the combination entirely unpleasant.  The associations all have a warm, holiday glow to them in his headspace like a favourite Christmas movie, nostalgia tempered with a stern reminder that _this only belongs to you for a little while_.  Matt wades into the memory and finds the strength to articulate himself: “Do I have to go to the hospital?”   
  
            “102.2,” Foggy replies.  “Not 98.6, but at least your brain isn’t boiling.”   
  
            “Thank you.”  Once again, there’s more to say – thank you for not taking me back to the hospital, thank you for calling Claire, thank you for taking care of me, thank you for letting me projectile vomit in your bathroom – but Matt doesn’t have the energy for that.  Better still, he doesn’t need to say it: Foggy gets it.  Foggy’s heartbeat tells him so.

            “Do you even remember getting here last night?”

            Matt retraces his steps.  His memory is filled with long gaps, leaps in time he can’t make.  All of yesterday is a blur from waking up to getting to work.  He recalls a watery afternoon then a plunge into dark, quiet depths.  “I think I passed out at work…?”

            “That you did.”   
  
            “You and Karen called 9-1-1?”

            “Mmm-hmmm.”

            “I don’t remember the rest, Foggy.  I’m sorry,” he runs a hand down his clothing, expecting the razorblade texture of a hospital gown.  All he feels is well-worn cotton, a familiar scratching.  One of Foggy’s old band t-shirts and a clean pair of sweats.  “Did I take my clothes off again?”

            Foggy laughs, “No.  For some reason, you were able to get all the way across Hell’s Kitchen, but you were not able to undress yourself.  Claire did that; I helped.”

            “That’s good,” Matt sighs.

            “Yeah, I guess that counts as one win for the night.  You did just up and disappear from the hospital.”    
  
            “I couldn’t have disappeared.”

            “Claire asked around: you disappeared.  They don’t even have you on the security cameras.  They think you went out the window.”   
  
            Matt can’t find the memory.  He doesn’t remember being in the hospital at all.  Barely recalls arriving at Foggy’s apartment.  “It’s possible.”   
  
            “It’s scary, Matt, that’s what it is.  You were burning up.  You thought I was in trouble,” Foggy changes tracks in his train of though, “I tried to stay with you after visiting hours, but they said you were out for the night.  I figured I would come by in the morning.”

            There’s a question that Foggy’s asking indirectly, one that sounds a hell of a lot like _what the hell is wrong with you, Matt?_ The easiest answer would just be to leave it alone, but Matt knows Foggy deserves better. 

            “I don’t know what I was doing last night,” he tries to explain.  It’s the lamest of intros to an even lamer argument. 

            Foggy cuts him off, “You have to be able to go to the hospital.”   
  
            “I don’t like hospitals.”

            “Nobody likes hospitals.”   
  
            “Yeah, but I _really_ don’t like hospitals.  The smell, the taste, the noise,” which in his memory are all overwhelmed by the desperate sounds of a child screaming about not being able to see.  “I must have panicked.  I’m sorry, Foggy.”

            Foggy sighs, draws nearer, “Are you okay, Matt?”   
  
            “I’ve been better.” 

            “No, not the flu.  I mean are you okay?  Like…okay-okay?”

            Matt thinks he gets the drift, “I’m okay, Foggy.  I’m busier, but I’m okay.”   
  
            “Busier how?  We work at the same firm.  Oh, busier with the Mask.”

            “Fisk left a gap in the criminal element of this city.  Seems like there’s a lot of people looking to fill it.”

            “We have had this conversation before,” Foggy reminds him.  “You need to take care of yourself, Matt, or at least let other people help when you won’t.”

            Matt nods, “I know.”  He closes his eyes, takes a deep breathe to quell his embarrassment.  Not needing people remains one of Stick’s lasting impressions on him.    

            Foggy lets that lie for now, “You should probably eat something.”  He gets up and heads for the kitchen.  “Soup?”

            Matt shifts onto his side, just to try it.  The question strikes a chord in him.  Yes, he’s hungry.  No, he doesn’t think he can eat.  What should be a very simple procedure turns into a multi-step process thanks to his strained abdominals.  He pries a lukewarm gel pack out from under him and drops it onto the floor.  “I think I should probably stick to ginger ale.”

            “Ah, come on – the deli down the street made it from scratch.”   
  
            “Really, Foggy,” he feels another nap coming on just from rolling onto his back.  The chills have definitely returned.  “I don’t think I can hold a spoon right now.”

            Foggy returns and takes a seat on the coffee table.  He’s got a mug of soup in his hands; Matt drinks in an earthy mixture of clay, salt, and heat.  The stinging in his throat intensifies because it knows the end is nigh.  “Spoons aren’t that heavy,” Foggy offers hopefully. 

            Matt is loath to admit this, but his eyelids are already closing in defeat.  He is thoroughly wasted even by the thought of moving.  “Seriously, Foggy, I should probably just sleep some more.  I can’t…” he braces himself for the confession, “I can’t really move right now.”

            “If you even try to plead the ‘I escaped from the hospital last night and ran along the rooftops to save you from imaginary danger’ defence…”

            “I’m pleading the I-am-just-really-tired defence.”  And the I-don’t-like-people-fawning-over-me defence, but Matt is too exhausted to mention that. 

            “Your throat’ll feel better.”

            How the hell does he do that?  Five senses, not a single one of them super, and Foggy Nelson manages to see right through him to his weak spots.  He really could have been summa cum laude with a few less nights spent at the pub.  Matt sighs, holds out his hand, “Give me the cup.”   
  
            “You are going to spill it on yourself if you try to drink lying down.”   
  
            Determined to prove himself, Matt inches his head up onto the arm rest.  He’s feeling okay, so he tries to lift himself upright onto his elbows.  The motion is fine – shaky but fine – right up until the moment it’s not.  Vertigo claims him, knocking Matt flat back onto the couch. 

            He forces himself to breathe through the spin, deep breathes into his aching belly, meditative breaths, to keep from puking.  “Goodnight, Foggy,” Matt says instead of, “Screw consciousness.”  He goes to turn over but doesn’t have the energy.  Ends up falling back through his brain into his stinging throat and bobbing somewhere around his uvula. 

            Foggy is having none of that.  “Matt, do you trust me?”

            That’s a no-brainer, so Matt can answer, “Yes.”   
  
            “Can you just hold onto that thought for a second?”

            Their heart rates are head to head in a race for the finish.  “I can try,” Matt says.  “What are you thinking?”

            “You need to eat something,” Foggy says, “and work on your letting-people-help skills.”

            It’s what he doesn’t say that has Matt on edge.  “I’d rather sleep.”   
  
            “And I’d rather your fever not spike again.”

            “I’m not an invalid.”   
  
            “Yes, Matt, that’s exactly what you are right now.”   
  
            The spins are back, worse this time because sleep’s no longer an option.  Matt’s frustration reaches a pitch higher than his fever from last night.  “We tell no one about this,” he states flatly. 

            “Nobody,” Foggy agrees.

            “EVER.”

            “Under pain of death, my right hand to your God, my God, all the Gods: no one, not ever, not no how.”

            Matt wills the torpor in his head to subside.  He shoots a small, determined nod to Foggy, then feels his friend’s hand slip under his neck and lift his head upright.  The next few seconds are crucial.  Matt puts as much distance as he can between himself and the moment: Foggy’s family at Christmas time, Claire’s hand on his arm, ginger ale and thermometers and chicken soup is the greatest thing ever invented.  All hail chicken soup and warm spoons and semi-solid foods.  The inside of Matt’s skull goes all yellow, warm, and salty.  The abraded flesh on the inside of his throat settles to a dull pulse of pain. 

            Foggy pulls the spoon back from his lips, lets him swallow, than lowers his head onto the arm rest.  Matt’s shivers subside from the heat.  He mouths a thank you and melts into a satisfied, boneless mess under the blankets. 

            “More?” Foggy offers.

            Well, since they’re never talking about this ever, Matt nods.  Foggy responds in absolute silence and offers him another mouthful.  It’s better than the first, more languid.  Matt achieves perfect homeostasis.  He doesn’t even feel like he’s going to throw up.

            “So…there’s more criminals on the street?”

            The soup must be magical, because Matt didn’t register the shift in Foggy’s respiration signalling his about to say something.  Nelson for the defence: Matt can’t not answer at this point.  “Not like Fisk,” he says.  It’s the truth, though he’s understating the activity by a lot.  “Just thugs looking for a foothold.  We knew this would happen.  It’s nothing I can’t handle.”

            Foggy shoves another spoonful of soup into his mouth before speaking again, “Uh huh, because you always get the Hellmouth flu.  Come on, Matt.  You have got to go easy on yourself for a bit.  You’re going to get yourself killed by random, everyday stuff.”   
  
            Matt chokes back the soup.  It doesn’t taste so good anymore, embittered as it is by Foggy’s concern and his own sense of obligation.  “I can’t let someone else take over Fisk’s business in Hell’s Kitchen.”

            “Which is exactly what you’ll do if you die.”   
  
            Hell of an attorney, that Foggy.  Matt lets his silence speak for him, and when he feels a futile argument bubbling up in his throat, he chooses the better of two evils, “Give me more of that soup.”   
           

* * *

 

            Matt’s stomach accepts his peace offering and goes straight back to business as usual without all the tossing, turning, and knotting from yesterday.  He doesn’t have the mental energy to meditate yet, but he does settle into a doze.  Foggy sings from the kitchen as he does the dishes; traffic takes on its nighttime pace and sirens wail in the distance.

            His fever’s broken.  He knows, because he can focus clearly again.  Standing still leaves him reeling though, not to mention feeling like his legs might dissolve.  He needs at least another night’s sleep before he’s street-worthy again.

            “Sit down before you fall down!” Foggy sings at him.

            Matt drops onto the couch and waits for his head to stop spinning.  The sirens circumnavigate his head in an ever tightening spiral.  “You wouldn’t happen to have some body armour and marital arts training, would you, Foggy?”   
  
            “Unlike some people, if I had a secret identity, I wouldn’t keep it a secret.”

            There’s no venom in his voice, so Matt can smile.  He’s being ribbed.  He feels entitled to rib right back, “You couldn’t keep it a secret.  You would start a YouTube channel and reveal your identity at a press conference Tony Stark style.”

            “Can I be a billionaire in this fantasy as well as a vigilante?” Foggy hangs up the dish towel and grabs something from the fridge.  He comes around to sit on the couch next to Matt with a glass of ginger ale in his hand.  He doesn’t even bother letting Matt try to hold it, swatting at Matt’s hands when they come near.  Matt’s allowed to bite down on the straw and take a few sips, then lean his head back against the couch. 

            The sweetness is muffled by the sounds of sirens that he can’t stop listening to.  Sirens that are probably too late.  Sirens that call attention to all the other areas of the city where the sirens aren’t. 

            The silence tips off Foggy, who comes up with a suitable distraction, “Television?”   
            “Sure,” Matt doesn’t have anything else to do. 

            The high-pitched screech of the television makes the world on fire go fizzly.  Matt’s perception of the room gets distorted for several moments until he adjusts.  The same thing happened every time in school, since this television has been kicking around for long before that. 

            There’s a hiss every time Foggy changes the channels.  Matt keeps count.  Foggy’s the sort who can channel surf longer than he can stand to watch something.  He isn’t in for the long haul; he’s the sort who wants a distraction.  The fact that he can put together a plot with very little information helps.  If there’s one thing Foggy knows, it’s narrative conventions of popular, contemporary texts. 

            “Oh, wow, there’s nothing on.”   
  
            “There’s always something on, Foggy.”

            They’ve had this argument before.  When?  Where?  Matt tries to place them, and he realizes what’s happening.  This is a bit Foggy does.  “Oh, there’s nothing on,” and then, “I guess we have to watch something terrible,” followed by, “This is the most spectacular garbage television has to offer!”  The whole thing plays like an episode of whatever tired show they’re about to stumble on.  Foggy wants to watch crap-tv, but he doesn’t want people to know that he wants to watch crap-tv. 

            “Guess this is better than nothing,” Foggy says.

            “Disturbed by what it takes just to prepare the evening meal?!” a voice demands. 

            There’s a grainy quality to the voice track that doesn’t exist in shows from the last decade.  The frequency brushes over his ears like over-starched fabric: stiff and gritty on the air.  He doesn’t recognize it, nor the highly affected conversation about cons of expensive knives.  “What does it take to prepare the evening meal?” he asked Foggy.

            “A hacksaw and what looks to be half a cow.”

            “Hm.”   
  
            “You can also cut a pineapple in midair.”   
  
            “Yeah, I heard.  The voiceover just said that.”

            Foggy scoffs, “But you can’t know if it showed it.”   
  
            “Did it?”

            “Yes, it did.”

            Matt’s laugh gets caught in his throat and sounds exactly like he feels: cracked, a little thready, guilty.  There’s a city that needs help and he’s stuck on a couch watching a program where the biggest problems are conjured from impossibilities like not being able to cut a pineapple in half in midair.

            A studio audience cheers with exaggerated enthusiasm.  Foggy gasps, “Oh, now they’re trying to cut a kitten.”

            “They are not,” Matt scoffs, listening to the trite dialogue of the host and the slurp of blade against fruit, likely a watermelon.

            “No, seriously, that’s what he’s trying to do.”

            “Why can’t I hear the kitten, then?”

            “Because it’s a mute kitten.  One of the rejects from the SPCA.”    
  
            Matt cringes, “This just got unnecessarily dark.”

            “It’s trying to crawl away.  I can’t look, I can’t look…”   
  
            “But then who will provide me with very accurate information about the events on-screen?”

            “You’re right.  This is my gift, Matthew, and my curse,” the chopping and slurping sounds continue, “OH!  And in a weird and very surprising twist, the kitten is actually a carnivorous alien, and it is now eating the host.”

            “I can still hear him talking, Foggy.” 

            “It’s a kitten, Matthew.  It takes very small bites out of its human prey,” Foggy offers.  Then, on a completely related note, “Hey, why don’t you use knives?”

            “I never learned.”   
  
            Matt stops himself.  He wasn’t supposed to say that.  The conversation is leading straight to Stick, and he has only talked about Stick once with Foggy.  He is about to clam up, to stammer out some stupid excuse, but then he reconsiders.  “Uh…the man who trained me left before he taught me about knives.” 

            Well, that was easy.  No harm in that.  Next, Matt can talk getting his ass kicked repeatedly at ten years old by a crotchety, blind geriatric. 

            His tongue stiffens on instinct.  No, maybe not. 

            Foggy understands and takes the conversation in another direction.  A more awkward direction, “Why would he leave before he taught you about knives?”

            Matt’s not ready to cover that.  He tries to think of a good line and just falls completely silent, a small, sheepish smile being his only response. 

            Foggy’s breathing hitches.  He is about to ask more.  Matt cuts him off, “He had to go.  Something involving an international crime syndicate.”

            The lie successfully diverts even Foggy Nelson, best damn avocado at law, “How many of you blind vigilantes are there?”

            Another question for which the only response is silence.  Matt actually doesn’t know, but he knows the answer isn’t as comforting as ‘two’.  Stick’s a recruiter.  He has a collection of blind soldiers dotted across the globe.

            Matt tries to untie his tongue.  He owes Foggy that much, “I don’t know.”

            Silence.  Between Matt and Foggy at least.  The rest of the world is never silent in Matt’s ears.  It’s all a swelling, spiralling symphony.  Car horns, conversations, wind, erosion, waves, static, wifi: Matt is too tired to filter through them but not quite tired enough to float amidst them.  He grasps onto the audio of the television when it finally returns.  More cutting.  “That kitten hasn’t finished the host off yet?”   
  
            “Alas, no.  The kitten has fallen asleep next to a half-eaten finger.  It’s adorable and disgusting, and I think I need a set of these knives.”   
  
            “You’re not serious.”   
  
            “They can cut a pineapple in half _in the air_ ,” Foggy says in a tone best described as brain-washed.  “Those knives will come in handy when I am defending myself from whatever evils my apartment has in store for me.”   
  
            “That’s it.  Just for that, the next time I get the flu, I am going to save Karen from imaginary evil.”   
  
            “The knives are buy one, get one free.  I’ll give her a set.  Then you can just stay home when you have the flu, in bed, like a normal person.”

            “What happens if you’re not being attacked by airborne pineapples?”   
  
            “You mean imaginary airborne pineapples?”   
  
            “No, I mean like…” Matt stops laughing.  Realizes what he’s getting at, that it’s not a joke.  The sirens are still out there even if he’s not paying attention.  He lowers his tired eyes to what he assumes are a safe distance from Foggy’s face and keeps the thought in his head where it belongs.

            Foggy drags the thought into the world, kicking and screaming and with no respect for Matt’s willful suspension of disbelief, “ _Real_ airborne pineapples?”

            “You know that’s not what I meant.”   
  
            Nothing.  No witty comeback.  Foggy is silent, having, in his own way, weaseled his way through all Matt’s banter to what’s really being said.  Without even focusing, Matt knows his friend’s temperature gone up by a fraction of degrees, just enough for the Foggy-shaped fire in his head to go from orange to a creamy yellow.  Breath shift.  A hand coming to rest on his shoulder, banishing the flu-induced ache in his joint.

            “Friends protect _each other_ ,” Foggy can’t stress the last two words enough.  “You gotta let me save the day sometime too.”

            Matt has to say it.  He can’t keep it in any longer, “There are so many sirens out there, Foggy.”   
  
            “I know,” Foggy’s voice is all certainty and sad resignation, because one day, those sirens are going to be for Matt.  He distracts himself this time from the train of thought by holding the glass back up to Matt’s face.  “More ginger ale?”   
  
            Matt doesn’t even try to lift his hands.  “Seriously, we tell no one about this,” he bites on the straw and takes a sip.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For more Sick!Matt, check out drewbug (ff.net)/shyday’s (AO3) fantastic fics Delirium and Translation of Languages Murdock. 
> 
> Happy reading!


	10. ...Stick Comes Back

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The first time he meets Stick, Foggy finally builds a slam-dunk case years in the making against him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: the characters and concepts in this story are the property of Marvel and their related affiliates. This is an amateur writing effort meant for entertainment purposes only.
> 
> There were so many requests for a Foggy-meets-Stick chapter that I’m worried I won’t personally thank you all for them. Kaleesh was the first that I could recall with a request for Foggy to deduce that Stick was abusive and have a confrontation. Most important about the prompt was that Foggy has to figure it out for himself, which turned into an experiment with form that I hope works with the chapter. MollyMonster requested a chapter where Foggy goes off at Stick for all the crap he did to Matt; weasleythewicked seconded with a suggestion. If I forgot anyone, I’m sorry! Thank you to the prompters. Getting everything into this fic was a challenge, so I hope I have done it justice here! I can also say that this is acting a prequel to another fic I’ll post as a standalone; Foggy is not finished with Stick yet. Oh, no. Not yet. 
> 
> I have to also add that this was one of those chapters where I wasn’t sure how it all tied together until it all tied together. It was a beautiful moment, one that happens so rarely in writing, that I need to thank everybody again for being so patient. 
> 
> Readers, dear readers: this was a long break for me, and I’m sorry. I do hope that you’re all still enjoying the fic and coming back for more. Thank you so, so much for your kind support! Please, enjoy!

* * *

 

…Stick Comes Back

 

The first time he meets Stick, Foggy builds a slam-dunk case against him. 

 

Exhibit A: Matt’s Insane Pain Tolerance (and, by extension, Matt’s Insane Belief that Pain is Normal)

 

            Thanksgiving at the Nelsons is a grand old time.  The entire Nelson hoard shows up, all eighty of them: aunts, uncles, cousins, second cousins, partners, pets.  There’s drinking until the wee hours of morning, usually a fight or two between inebriated relatives, and lots of cured meats.  Usually, Foggy goes stag, but he can’t leave Matt alone at Columbia for the weekend.  They’re already friends, and Foggy knows his mother will kill him if he leaves his orphaned roommate alone on the greatest of all holidays.

            Within minutes, Matt ends up cornered by several of Foggy’s meddling aunts who all want to set the cute future lawyer up with one of the Nelson lady-cousins, and he doesn’t seem to mind at all.  In fact, the constant reiteration that he’s basically a member of the family has him beaming.  Foggy feels confident enough to leave him for a while; well, that and he gets dragged off to the park for the annual Nelson Bowl. 

            Football for the Nelsons is something deeper than an institution.  It is in a Nelson’s nature to pile-drive, tackle, dog pile, and otherwise inflict blunt force trauma for glorious victory on the field.  Foggy assumes that they are distantly related to the Vikings for all the brutality they display during that game.  Bones had been broken in the Nelson Bowl.  Blood had been spilled.  And then, because all those wounds would be broken and bleeding hours later regardless of when they went to the hospital, dinner was served. 

            Still, Foggy recognizes that this isn’t the norm.  Other families on the block are sipping highballs, playing backgammon, and chatting about the newest episode of the Kardashians.  Regular family stuff.  Not beating the crap out of each other for a leather ball and a homemade trophy.  He doesn’t think that this was weird, but he chalks that up to a familial breed of Stockholm syndrome and numerous head injuries over the years.

            Matt doesn’t have that excuse.  He’s caught completely off-guard by the display of brute force when he wanders into the park with some of the other cousins, without his cane, and ends up being mistaken for a player.  Foggy tries to warn him, but he barely gets his mouth open when Matt disappears beneath six of the Nelson boys.   

            No, not ‘boys’.  Nelson brick walls.  Nelson linebackers.  Nelson gigantic-dudes-designed-for-pillaging-Northern-English-villages.  SIX OF THEM on one handsome duck.

            Foggy immediately throws himself into the fray, yanking at t-shirts, pounding at muscular backs, biting (at one point), shouting all kind of insults and “MATT!?  MATT!  JUST HANG ON!  KEEP BREATHING!”  It’s slow moving: none of the Nelsons know how to give up on a good hit.  “What the hell is wrong with all of you!?” Foggy catches sight of Matt’s bony arm underneath his family members.  It isn’t moving.  “Matt, can you hear me?!  Are you okay!?”

            “He’s fine.  He’s fine!  It was a good, clean hit.”

            “No hit in the history of Nelson hits have ever been clean,” Foggy declares.  He hauls two people away from the pile, finally revealing Matt’s crumpled form on the grass.  “Oh, my God, Matt, I am so sorry!” There are bruises already starting to develop on his arms and face, little mementos of the Nelson mutants trying to kill him.  Foggy kneels down beside him.  “Matt, are you okay?  Speak to me?”  
  
            Matt’s cough sounds wet, and Foggy worries that this is the Thanksgiving where someone finally dies during the Nelson Bowl.  However, Matt’s cough turns into a full blown laugh.  He wraps his arms around his stomach and continues chuckling all the way into a sitting position. 

            And, just like the Vikings before them, the hoard of Nelson footballers raise their hands to the sky in a cheer for not having murdered an innocent, blind orphan in public on Thanksgiving.  Matt joins in too, Foggy assumes, because he’s suffering from head trauma. 

            “GET HIM A DRINK!” someone shouts.

            “GET HIM TO THE HOSPITAL!” Foggy shouts.  “Seriously.  You all just about killed him.”  
  
            “Relax, Foggy.  I’m fine.  I’m fine!  Really,” Matt pushes himself onto his feet.  Before he gets more than a few inches off the ground, one of his attackers comes over and yanks him the rest of the way to vertical.  Another claps him fiercely to get the grass and dirt off his clothes.   

            Matt is still laughing, still drinking in the whole experience of a Nelson family gathering, still not dead.  There is already a bruise starting to develop on his cheek, not to mention a golf-ball sized mound of swelling on his wrist.  Foggy stares, “Are you sure you’re okay?”  
  
            “Yeah, yeah,” Matt sucks his next breath through clenched teeth.  One hand doesn’t leave his ribs.  In fact, the tendons are popping out of his wrist from the strain.  A few seconds of silence is his signal to drop his hand.  “What a rush!”  
  
            “Foggy!  Friend of Foggy!”  Jesus, his family even talks like Vikings.  “You guys in for this play?”

            Matt actually looks like he’s in for this one.  He looks poised to take a step into the game, even though his hand is back at his ribs.  Foggy has to take him by the arm and march him in the opposite direction, away from his spectating family.  “Seriously, man, you okay?”  
            “Yeah, Foggy: just winded, that’s all.”

            “Because blind or not, I know how freakishly huge my family is and what it’s like to get buried by them.  Newcomers have died in the Nelson Bowl.”

            “You call it the Nelson Bowl?”

            “Family tradition.  Can we focus on you, please?”

            “Foggy, I promise: I’m fine.  I’m absolutely fine,” Matt’s hand still hasn’t left his side.  “Bruised ribs and football: totally normal.”

            “Okay, one, what we play isn’t football.  It’s like a modern version of sacking Rome.  And two, bruised ribs are not normal even in football.  The Nelsons are not normal.  We’re centuries away from our normal.”

            From the look on Matt’s face, Foggy suspects the lad’s entire worldview is getting overhauled in light of this new information.  Like a computer installing new software.  Then, when the silence registers and Matt picks up on Foggy’s being weirded-out, he avoids the topic entirely, “Either way, it’s fine, Foggy.  I’m fine.  Go on and get back to the game.  Win that Nelson Bowl!”

            It doesn’t occur to Foggy at the time to ask more questions, to comment on how forced Matt’s laugh sounds or even Matt’s ragged breathing that night when they fall asleep.  Part of that is alcohol; the other, bigger part is the foolish belief that life at the orphanage was just rough, because obviously, orphans must have cracked each other’s ribs all the time in harmless games of Death-ball.  Right?

            Besides, even if Matt’s ribs aren’t cracked, which is never confirmed (although an idiot could probably figure it out given the evidence, a fact that still bristles Foggy), it would just provide even more ample evidence for Foggy’s case like…

 

Exhibit B:  Matt’s Abandonment Issues (and His Inability to Deal With Them)

 

            Foggy knows something’s up when he arrives back at the dorm and Matt’s already drinking.  Two beers in, and the lad’s nursing a very obvious buzz. 

            “Hey!  Foggy!” Matt already has his coat and scarf on.  He’s doing a pretty good job with his shoes considering the very apparent loss of motor function in his fingers. “Let’s go out!”   

            “Okay!” Foggy is only too happy to oblige.  He drops his school bag on the bed and watches a few more seconds of the train wreck that is his roommate before asking, “Two questions though: who are you, and what the hell have you done with my roommate?”

            Matt tries to laugh, but it’s the forced kind.  His whole diaphragm has to get involved to make the sound; Foggy can practically see the muscles straining to keep it sounding natural.  “I’m just taking your advice: I’m letting loose.”

            “Not that I am complaining about you finally taking my advice, but why now?  I thought you were staying in all night to study for exams.”  Not that he needs to study.  Matt’s pretty much cemented his place at the top of the program.   
  
            On his feet, Matt looks even drunker than he did sitting down.  Maybe the two empties on his bed aren’t the only thing he’s been drinking.  Foggy thinks he can smell whiskey on the air. 

            He waits for Matt’s rebuttal, which given how long they end up standing in silence seems like it’s going to be a good one, but all Matt says is, “Does it matter?”  He tosses in a full-body shrug to conclude his defence. 

            Months of living together in close quarters, and Murdock has never been this wasted during a pre-drinking session.  Certainly never when Foggy’s been around.  He can’t decide whether to be suspicious or not.  Matt’s quirks all assert themselves quietly with more than adequate amounts of plausible deniability.  Foggy opts to roll with the punches on this one, see where it goes. 

            Apparently, it goes to every pub around campus, and Matt, usually a total lush, manages to stay drink-for-drink with Foggy until they’re clambering up the stairs of their dorm again.  One helps the other then swaps every couple of steps. 

            Matt ends up dropping face first onto his bed.  Foggy gets his first shoe off his foot with a few good yanks.  The laces are freakishly tight.  “What are you doing?” Matt slurs from somewhere in his blankets. 

            It’s funny and Foggy doesn’t know why.  He just lets himself laugh.  “I only got one of your shoes off!”

            “Oh, whatever…” Matt’s laughing a little too.  “Just leave them.  Leave them.  Who cares: shoes on or off.  Not like I’m really going anywhere.”

            “What do you mean?” Foggy drops the first shoe and grabs the second.  Matt’s leg is super heavy and bends at weird angles the more he pulls.  “We’ve got holidays.  You’re going back to Hell's Kitchen, right?”

            “Eh, what’s the use?  I mean…I mean…” he’s trying to get words out between the laughs and failing more miserably than he was with the shoes.  He tries to roll over, because that will help him speak clearly, and nearly pitches Foggy into the wall with his leg.

            More laughter ensues, punctuated only by a few loud knocks on the wall warning them to shut up.  They both just hold fingers to their lips and laugh quieter.  

            “I mean…” Matt’s stage whispering.  “There’s nothing really for me there yet, right?  After graduation, sure, when I start interning…”  
  
            Foggy can’t figure out how he missed the most important part of Hell's Kitchen, “I’ll be there.”

            “And you’ll be with your family.  I can’t just…I can’t just keep tagging along with you and your family, Foggy.”  
           
            “Why not?’

            “Well, cause it’s not…after graduation…things don’t…they don’t last, Foggy.  With other people, I mean.”  
  
            Foggy chuckles, “None of that made any sense, man.”  

            Matt settles into a scary quiet.  If he still had sight, he’d be looking through the ceiling at a bleak future.  One he proceeds to narrate to Foggy in low tones, “Things fall apart.  One second we’re roommates, and the next we’re just two guys who went to law school together.”

            “That is not the way it’s gonna be, buddy,” Foggy laughs again.  He stops short when he doesn’t hear Matt laugh along with him. 

            Matt’s still got his eyes on that horrible future in the ceiling, “I have a habit of slipping in and out of people’s lives.  Or maybe people have a habit of slipping in and out of mine.”  
  
            Meaning takes a long time to surface through the miles of alcohol flooding Foggy’s brain.  “Do you…do you want me out of your life?”  He doesn’t know if he can handle that thought right now.

            Matt can’t handle that thought _ever_.  “Oh, no, Foggy, I didn’t mean it like that.  I just mean that…”

            “Well, then, don’t let me slip out of your life,” Foggy declares.  There.  Simple.  Problem solved.  He shrugs.  What the hell was the big deal with that?  “I’m not going to let you slip out of mine.  You are the only person who’s ever taken a worse beating than me at the Nelson Bowl, Matt!  We’re like blood brothers or something!”

            Whatever Matt says next is a mumble, but later, when Foggy’s sober and feeling paranoid, he’ll assume Matt admits to having his ribs cracked during the game.  The bleak future still seems to weigh on him in Foggy’s drunk eyes after that though, so the only natural thing to do is ruffle Matt’s hair.  “I’m not going anywhere, man.  Are you?”  
  
            The gesture makes Matt beam, “Nah.  Well, I think I’m going to go to bed.”

            “You go to bed, Blood Brother!  I think I will do the same!” Foggy tries to get to his feet and falls flat on his ass.  “Nevermind!  I will sit here until the spins stop!”

            He’s surprised that Matt starts moving after that, inching slowly towards the edge of the bed before falling onto the floor with a hard thud.  The alcohol dulls his pain.  He gets right back up, still swaying, and slumps against the wall next to Foggy.  “Not going anywhere,” he mumbles, liking the sound of those words, before passing out. 

            “I don’t know why you thought I was,” Foggy remembers muttering.  It’s only years later that the answer dawns on him, which brings him to:

 

Exhibit C:  Matt has Zero Sense of Self-Worth (Except About His Alter-Ego)

 

            Matt is slack-jawed and drooling, conscious because who-the-hell-knows-how, and bleeding from one too many places on his body, but in a voice of jip rock and gravel still insists, “I’m fine.  I’m fine.” 

            “You know,” Foggy presses a little harder into Matt’s side to stop the blood flow, “if I had a nickel for every time you said ‘I’m fine’ or ‘I’m okay’ or ‘it’s nothing’, I would have my own economy in the small country I purchased with all my nickels.”

            “No, but this…”

            “No, Matt!” he almost gives up, but he forces himself to keep applying pressure.  Apparently, he applies enough of it, because while the blood doesn’t stop flowing, Matt’s face blanches.  He groans.  His eyes roll up to the whites and stay there for a long moment.  Foggy waits for him to regain composure, then continues, “You can’t keep doing this!  You could die tonight.  You could die right here, right now.”

            Matt’s mouth slants sideways into the hypovolemic version of a smirk, “Least I died at home…”

            “That’s not funny.”  
  
            “…in the arms of my best friend.”

            Foggy wants to punch that smirk off his face, “I will let go of this rag.  I will let you bleed out.”

            “You’re right, Foggy, I’m sorry.  I’m sorry…” Matt’s head rolls limply towards his chest.  He tries to pick it back up again and ends up slamming it into the wall.  The pain doesn’t register.  “I won’t die.  I promise.  Not tonight.”

            The damage has already been done.  Foggy’s eyes are getting buggy with tears, and he can’t wipe them away without letting his best friend bleed to death.  “You don’t really get to decide that, Matt,” he points out.  One tear rolls down his cheek; Foggy’ll be damned if he lets the others follow.  He mashes his cheeks into his shoulders to keep from crying.  “You have to stop.  You have to stop this, Matt.  This is going to kill you.”

            “I can’t stop, Foggy.  The city…the city needs me in the mask, Foggy.”

            Déjà vu all over again, and for some reason, this time hurts more than the first.  Matt was on the mend when he used those words before, and Foggy had been too pissed off to read into them.  But here, now, in the wake of a conversation with his dying friend, it dawns on Foggy what’s actually being said.  

            “The city needs me in that mask, Foggy,” Matt insists with greater vigor this time.  His first self-affirming statement ever, probably in the history of his entire life, and it emerges from a bloodied face, a broken body, from a surreal version of Foggy’s best friend with one foot firmly in the grave.   
  
            Foggy swallows the lump in his throat.  He feels a kind of resignation that comes with tragic revelations.  “I think I’m finally figuring you out, Matt: when you say ‘I’m fine’, it’s really your way of saying, ‘It makes no difference if I am or not.” Matt shifts uncomfortably under the weight of Foggy’s words but can’t escape from the pressure of his friend’s grip.  He’s forced to listen, agonized by the process of being known. “You say, ‘It’s okay,’ which means, ‘You don’t have to care.’  And for you, ‘It’s nothing’ is just a prefix for ‘because I don’t matter.  At all.’”

            Now Matt’s eyes are brimming with tears.  “That’s not…” but he can’t finish that sentence because it is.  It is true.  And Foggy knows it with a horror he wishes he could have been spared. 

            “I don’t think you have any sense of self-worth at all, Matt, which is insane because you are one of the best people I have ever known.  But no,” tears rain down Foggy’s chin and onto the bloody tea towel currently holding Matt’s life inside his body.  “No, turns out, you do have a value system, but that you don’t feature in it at all.  No one does.  Not you, not me, not Karen, not anyone…”

            “That’s not true!” Matt’s voice is barely a whisper.  His mouth is starting to slacken again, and his eyes are rolling up and away.  He forces himself to stay present.  “Foggy…”

            “The only thing that matter is this grandiose, Fiskian idea of the City that needs defending and this masked avenger who defends it.  At the expense of his own life!”  

            Pissed doesn’t even begin to cover it.  Enraged is getting closer, but there’s no word for how monumentally betrayed he feels.  Foggy crumples as his heart tears itself to pieces like tissue paper in his chest.  He weeps freely and openly, no longer caring if Matt’s still with him or not.  Whether his friend’s hands press against his face, frigid from blood loss, and hold onto him all the way into unconsciousness. 

            Claire arrives a second after Matt passes out, and she takes over keeping Matt’s blood in his body with sutures.  Foggy goes to the bathroom to wash the blood off his faces.  Matt’s handprints on his cheeks make him punch the bathroom counter. 

            He stands in pain, clutching his bruised knuckles, hating Matt.  Hating the Mask.  Most of all, though, he hates the person who did this to his friend.  Someone hurt Matt.  Someone hurt Matt bad.  Someone pulled him apart and made him believe that he was less than nothing.  That someone isn’t his dad or the Catholic Church or even the orphanage.  That someone has to be the one who turned Matt into the Mask in the first place.  It has to be the man who trained him, and he has to be an epic asshole. 

 

* * *

 

            “An epic asshole,” the wiry shadow mocks him, “Are you even listening to the words coming out of your mouth right now, or are you too stupid to do that?”

            Hard to tell from the hard shadows in Matt’s living room, but Foggy swears he could take this guy.  Tall and lean, definitely muscular, about eighty years old if the silver hair and deep wrinkles aren’t tricks of the light, not to mention _blind_ : yeah, Foggy decides.  He can take this dude.

            “Leave it alone, Foggy,” Matt wheezes from the corner.  He’s got bloody rakes on one shoulder like he’s been mauled by a tiger.  Blood’s pooling at his feet.  His phone call is still ringing in Foggy’s ears from fifteen minutes before.  There’s not a lot of time before that third pint hits the floor.  “He was just leaving.”  

            The old man holds his ground, keeps his blind eyes trained exactly where Foggy’s standing.  Matt can do that kind of thing but not with this guy’s accuracy.  Foggy corrects his original assessment: challenging this guy would hurt a little, but he could come out on top in the end. 

            Matt doesn’t like being ignored, “Stick!  You were just leaving.”

            “Yeah, I heard you,” the old guy – Stick?  What the hell kind of a…?  Oh, whatever: Foggy doesn’t bother.  This is a blind old man who trained Matt in ancient martial arts.  Of course he has some weird-ass name like Stick – he turns slightly, just enough that Foggy can see the long hilt of a samurai sword looming over his shoulder.  Foggy feels his odds in the fight drop a little more.  Then again, Stick might not be allowed to use a sword against an unarmed combatant.  Isn’t that an ancient ninja rule or something?  “I want your friend to elaborate on his asshole comment first.”  
  
            “I can elaborate for you.  Get the hell out of my apartment before I do,” Matt’s voice is all deep and devilly.  Foggy nearly leaves in response. 

            “No, no,” in one swift movement, Stick snaps his cane to its full length.  He doesn’t need it; he manoeuvers the tip deftly through the furniture with the same insane perceptiveness as Matt while he walks.  “You’ve called me an asshole before, Matty.  I want to know how your friend came to that conclusion.  He been telling stories about me?”

            Foggy sets his mouth into a hard line, “Figured it all out on my own.  You sure as hell weren’t careful about it.” 

            “Foggy,” begging doesn’t become the devil’s voice, but Matt’s having a bad night. 

            Stick’s getting closer, “Foggy – what the fuck kind of a name is ‘Foggy’?”

            “What the fuck kind of a name is ‘Stick’?”

            His painfully stupid question gets a stupidly painful answer when a sharp snap lands across the backs of his knees and sends him straight to the floor.

            “An accurate one, dumbass.”

            One of Matt’s footfalls is heavier than the other.  Foggy doesn’t know why he registers this as he’s trying to get back to his feet, but he’s pretty worked up and decides to go with it.  He’s on his knees when Stick sweeps his cane up into Matt’s chest, stopping him several feet away from the action.  “What was the one thing I taught you, Matty?  The one thing I made sure you knew?”

            “Before you what?  Before you left?” 

            “Exactly!  I left.  Because you needed to know how much better you are alone,” Stick’s cane snaps against Foggy’s cheek hard enough to leave a welt.  “And you found someone about as useless as they come.  You here to stitch him up, Foggy?”

            “Stick, I swear…”

            “You been swearing a lot lately,” Stick looks over his shoulder like he can still see Matt standing there.  “Why don’t you come over here and do that elaborating you were threatening to earlier?  Let me know I still have one soldier on the ground for when the war…”  
  
            Foggy doesn’t let him finish his last syllable.  He lifts the strap of his duffel over his head quietly, kicks himself to his feet, and like a true Nelson, he throws his Viking frame straight into the epic asshole who hurt Matt Murdock.  Shoulder to liver, arms around the waist, into the floor, Hell, or Valhalla - whatever comes first.  It’s a good, messy hit, one leaves Stick caneless and pinned.  Foggy has enough of an advantage to land a few punches: first to Stick’s neck, then to his kidney, and then to the hardwood floor, because Stick has seemingly disappeared from under him. 

            Pain explodes across his shoulder blades first and his face second.  Stick is to blame for his shoulders; the floor is to blame for his face.  Foggy’s next breath is of blood and mucous from his broken nose.  He thinks he might drown until Stick heaves him up by the collar and slams him back-first into the floor again.

            Foggy waves an arm in front of his face to defend himself just as the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen enters the fight with a tackle that would make the Nelson cousins proud.  Stick ends up on the floor for the second time that night, and two shadows enter into a fierce battle of fists and kicks.  In the shifting light and his swirling vision, Foggy has trouble keeping track until Matt lets out a shout of bloody murder.

            He’s back on his feet in an instant to find Matt crawling away from the fight, hand on his injured shoulder.  He’s trailing blood like a snail.  Stick’s not far behind him, and when he lunges, his hand finds Matt’s wound and grips it tightly. 

            The cry that follows shuts down Foggy’s reasoning skills.  He comes at Stick like he came at his cousins that day they piled on Matt, but this time he’s fueled by the thought that his best friend is actually dying.  This old bastard is killing Matt.  That’s the kind of thing that make Foggy Nelson dangerous as hell. 

            Dangerous enough that he battles Stick into the wall, grabs the old bastard’s cane, and starts laying blow after blow.  He takes a kick to the stomach, and it’s bad, but nowhere near the kind of hit he’s taken during football.  He gets punched in the face and wrapped in a headlock, so Foggy bites Stick so hard he drinks the old man’s blood and spits it onto the bastard’s face when he’s released.  

            “Son of a bitch,” Stick curses. 

            “The name’s Foggy,” he corrects him. 

            The old bastard smiles and leans into the light.  Foggy stares into his milky eyes, his bloody face, his crazy smile, “Nice to meet you.”

            Matt shouts, “STICK, NO!”

            The last thing Foggy sees is Stick’s fist coming towards his face.  Then blood.  So much blood.

            A lot like Thanksgiving, actually.

 

* * *

 

            One eye won’t open.  The other creeps open by degrees, then shuts again from the light. 

            “You with us, Franklin?”

            Franklin’ll have to do.  He can’t get his mouth to move, not without exacerbating the already agonizing pain stabbing through his temples. 

            He looks forward to passing out again, getting back to a painless oblivion, but Matt’s voice wakes him up faster than a shake, “Foggy?”

            “Are you alright?” comes out sounding like a string of consonants.  Pure guttural nonsense.  It’s Claire and Matt’s faults really for waking him up.  He tries telling them that too and gets a nice hand massage from Claire, “It’s probably best if you don’t try to talk just yet.  Your face is pretty swollen.”

            Winking through the pain, Foggy watches as shapes begin to form in his vision.  Matt’s apartment ceiling first, then Claire at his right, checking his pulse.  Matt hovering just out of sight in the armchair.  His shoulder is neatly sutured, and there’s an empty sack of what used to hold blood slung over the chair back. 

            Claire intuits his next couple questions with surprising accuracy, “He’s going to be fine.  Little blood, little rest: the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen will be back kicking ass and getting his ass kicked in no time.  You’re going to be fine too.  Lot of ice, a lo-ot of rest,” the way she separates the word into two syllables tells Foggy not to look in a mirror for a while, “and you’ll be back to…whatever it is that you do.”

            “Kicking ass and getting his ass kicked,” Matt chuckles. 

            “Just…” Foggy coughs; his throat is bone dry.  He swallows a few times before trying again with the talking thing, “Just tell me…he looks worse…than me…”  
  
            “He looks worse than you,” Matt promises.

            “Liar.”

            “No, seriously he does.  He’s dinosaur aged, Foggy.  You had him beat when you walked into the apartment.”  
  
            Foggy closes his eye and gives into the pain, hoping he’ll pass out, “Not the answer I was hoping for, Matthew.”

            “You survived,” Claire puts a stop to the banter before it really begins, “That’s all that matters.  And it sounds like you did it without major brain damage.  What’s your name?”

            “Son of a bitch…”  
  
            Claire rolls her eyes.  She’s annoyed and still hot.  Not fair.  “What’s your _real_ name, smartass?”

            “Franklin Horatio Nelson.”

            “Who’s that?” she cocks her head towards Matt.

            Foggy is not in the mood for normal answers.  His head is pounding.  If he must be conscious, he should at least be entertained, “I’ve never seen that man before in my life.  Ever.” 

            “Oh, my God…” Claire sighs. 

            With his one good eye though, Foggy can see Matt starting to laugh.  He starts spinning his eye around in his socket until the dizziness almost makes him throw up, “Where am I?  What am I doing?  Oh, no!  I smell burnt toast!”  
  
            She finally cracks a smile, “Man, are you going to be sorry if you’re actually bleeding into your brain.”

            Claire stands up from the couch; Foggy follows her with his eye, but her change in altitude gives him vertigo.  He closes his eyes tight.  “I’m fine.  I promise I’m fine.  Just tired.  And my head hurts.”  
  
            “Your everything is going to start hurting soon,” Claire admits.  “You’ve got a concussion, black eye, bruising everywhere.  Matt’s going to wake you up every hour to check that you’re not in a coma.”  
  
            “Oh, I bet you’re loving that, Matt.”

            He doesn’t have to say anything.  Foggy can hear him smiling through the waves of pain in his head.  Claire continues, “Just get some rest, okay?”  
  
            Foggy doesn’t need to be told twice.  He closes his eyes and drifts away. 

* * *

  
           

            If Matt wakes him up, Foggy doesn’t remember.  The next time his eye opens, the ceiling is orange and pink from the sunset.  Fresh air is streaming through the open window.  The ice pack against his cheek disappears and is replaced with a fresh one.  Foggy nearly jumps out of his skin. 

            Pain.  Lots of pain.  Straight through his face to the back of his head.  “Aghhhh…” Foggy reaches up to try and swat it away but lifting his arm causes fresh bruises to throb like Whack-a-Moles across his chest and shoulders.

            He stops moving.  Stops thinking.  Stops breathing.  Stops everything.  Pain washes through him no matter what.  “I’m dying,” he finally breathes.  “The old bastard killed me.”  
            Matt’s voice sounds far away from how quiet it is, “I think if you stayed conscious any longer, he would have.”

            “He was asking for it.”  
  
            “Believe me, Foggy: Stick was asking for a lot worse than what you gave him.”

            “What the hell was he doing here?  Did you call him too?”

            “I don’t call Stick,” Matt bristles.  “He just drops in sometimes to tell me what I’m doing wrong.”  
  
            “Oh,” Foggy feels his senses returning.  The pain accepts his peace offering of Doing Absolutely Nothing and returns the favour by subsiding.  “Sorry I didn’t kick his ass better then.”

            Gradually, his eyelid opens once more.  Matt’s sitting next to the couch.  Only his head is visible.  Foggy can easily touch his friend’s hair just by raising his fingers.  “You okay?”

            “I’m fine, Foggy,” Matt tilts his head away from the touch.  “It’s okay.  It’s nothing.”  
  
            “Oh, here we go again…” Foggy lets his eye close. 

            “Here what goes again?”

            “You’re doing that thing.”

            “What thing?”

            “That thing where you’re hurt and you won’t tell me why.  If you don’t want to talk about it, just…”

            “What do you want me to say, Foggy?  That you almost died because of me and I feel bad?”  
  
            “Hey,” Foggy is not staying conscious for this crap.  Coma sounds better than dealing with his numerous injuries and Matt pretending he’s an automaton, “I almost died because a crazed, geriatric karate master deserved some payback for all the crap he did to you.”  
  
            “Crap he did to me?  What crap?”  
  
            “Oh, come on, Matt: you know,” Foggy forces himself an inch off the pillow to look Matt in the eye.  The pain is blinding, but he knows Matt’s look of confusion is genuine.  Foggy lets his head drop back and gives himself a long minute to recover.  Counts to thirty and back before he can speak again, “You really don’t know, do you?”

            “Stick’s training was harsh,” Matt understates the obvious so succinctly.

            “What happened to me was harsh,” Foggy can understate the obvious too.  “What happened to you was cataclysmic.  This guy did serious damage to you, Matt.”

            “He made me a warrior.”

            “He hurt you, and he made you want to hurt yourself.  Did I hurt him, Matt?  Please tell me I hurt him.”  
  
            “I don’t think Stick’s capable of experiencing pain.”

            “Oh, God damn it,” Foggy sucks in several sharp, agonizing breaths.  This isn’t happening.  All this pain, and that bastard gets away with nothing?  
  
            “You made him bleed quite a bit,” Matt offers.  It’s a weak consolation prize until he adds, “More than I’ve ever made him bleed.”  
  
            Foggy gives the weakest fist pump ever, “I’ll take it.”

            Matt smiles a little.  Not much, but enough that Foggy can see.  It’s one of Matt’s sad smiles, the ones that accompany bittersweet moments.  Like they lost the case but learned a valuable lesson or they have to quit a prestigious law firm but they’ll be better people because of it.  “I’m glad you’re okay, Foggy.”

            “I’m glad I’m okay too, Matt.”

            “You almost died and I feel bad,” Matt adds robotically. 

            “Yeah, but I didn’t go anywhere,” Foggy runs a finger over the back of Matt’s head.  “I’m not going anywhere.”

            Matt nods, remembering, “You know, I think we might be real blood brothers now or something.  We did a lot of rolling around in each other’s blood last night.”

            “That’s nice,” Foggy breathes, “and disgusting.  So disgusting, Matt.”

            “You also might be the only person who’s ever taken a worse beating from Stick than me.”

            “Weren’t you like nine when he started training you?”  
  
            “I was hoping,” Matt laughs, “you weren’t going to ask that.”

            Foggy groans, “You’re lucky I’m half-dead, Murdock, or I would kick your ass, like I sort of kicked the ass of your former mentor last night.”

            “Thank you for that, by the way.”

            At first, Foggy thinks he’s joking, but Matt’s surprisingly sincere.  “I’ve never had someone stand up for me like that, Foggy.  Thank you.”

            He doesn’t know what to say.  Making a joke cheapens the moment, and he did almost die trying to salvage his best friend’s honour the night before.  Instead, Foggy ignores the pain, ignores the thought of recovery, ignores how much he hates Stick and how much he wants revenge.  He focuses entirely on Matt and does his best job of sounding sincere too, “You’re welcome.  It was a real pleasure defending your honour.”  
  
            “You almost died for me.”  
  
            Foggy forces himself to nod, to play through the pain.  “You’re worth it,” and just so there’s no confusion about who he’s talking about, “Matt Murdock.”   

 

* * *

 

Happy reading!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Foggy's comment about smelling burnt toast is from a Canadian Heritage Moment about the first man to map the human brain and identify the source of epileptic seizures. I doubt he would know the reference, but I had to add it out of respect for my own childhood.


	11. ...of Evil Ex-Girlfriends

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Your ex stabbed you in the leg?”  
> “Yeah, she’s some kind of assassin, I think.”  
> “An assassin?”  
> Matt nods, “I think.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: the characters and concepts in this story are the property of Marvel and their related affiliates. This is an amateur writing effort meant for entertainment purposes only.
> 
> I was going to start work on a Foggy-gets-sick or Foggy-is-temporarily-blind installment when the announcement was made that they cast Elektra for season 2. Almost immediately, this chapter happened. I just had to write a painful reunion for the two of them. I’ll be back next time with one of the prompts for you, dear readers. 
> 
> I should mention here that the title of this chapter is a reference to something Foggy says, not my feelings about Elektra. She's definitely more of an anti-hero than evil. There's also references to the events of Iron Man 3 in this chapter.
> 
> Readers, you are all so lovely and amazing. Thank you for the kind support! Hope you enjoy!

* * *

 

…of Evil Ex-Girlfriends

 

            Matt gets back to his apartment via the roof.  Doesn’t know how so don’t ask.  He’ll think of a comfortable lie later.  He knows he took a roundabout route through the neighbourhood to dodge his attacker, and is pretty confident that he lost her since she doesn’t come busting through a window to get to him.

            And she would.

            Whatever she did to his leg breaks the pain scale.  Extending it to twenty doesn’t cover it.  There’s two puncture wounds evenly spaced apart on his calf.  Each one’s the size of his index finger.  He knows, because he accidently shoves his index finger in one trying to inspect it.  He comes to with his finger still inside his muscle.  Rude awakening for someone with normal senses, but with Matt’s tactility, he spends a few moments counting the shredded fibres in his calf muscle.  That’s before he remembers how to feel pain and lets out a good scream. 

            The sound echoes in his empty apartment, from the loft to the sitting room to the kitchen.  His spatial reasoning is distorted.  The walls warble near and far with every breath, expanding and contracting alongside his lungs.  Matt wishes he could tune it out, it’s not helping, and tries to take ownership of the pain, his disorientation, _her_ , it’s too much.  There’s not enough room inside him for all that to process.

            His phone slips through his fingers when he opens it, lands with a discordant clatter on the loft floor.  Matt tears off his gloves with his teeth, growling as he does so to keep from screaming again.  If his skin isn’t covered in blood, it’s covered in sweat or tears or saliva; he can’t stop shaking either.  It’s nothing short of a miracle that he dials the right number.  When Claire answers, Matt figures it’s God’s way of making this as alright as it can be, kind of like a peace offering. 

            “Your place or mine?” she asks jokingly.

            Matt wishes he called Foggy.  Wishes Foggy knew what to with two giant stab wounds in the leg.  Claire’s voice is enough to make him start crying again.  She’s wonderful, and she gone, and she didn’t stab him tonight.  “Mine,” Matt chokes.

            He says more, but it’s all gibberish.  She has the important information, so his brain starts shutting down.  The phone drops from his hand to the floor, his body crumples.  The whole apartment shouts his name and sounds a hell of a lot like Claire.  Then he passes out, because God doesn’t do peace offerings.   

            He dreams about _her_.  The way she used to be. 

* * *

 

            The sound of his eyelids opening – of all things – rouses him.  Matt can’t really get a grip on anything else.  He’s become one of the floorboards.  There’s pain distantly, miles away, in someone else’s apartment, on someone else’s leg.  Maybe it’s Claire’s apartment, because he can definitely tell it’s her hovering over that punctured piece of meat.  Only Claire can be that tender and clinical in the same instant. 

            “You with me?” she asks. 

            And just like that, the loft has dimension again.  Her echoes let him know he’s still lying on the floor, legs elevated on her jacket.  There’s a blanket wrapped around his chest to combat his hypovolemic chill.  Saline dripping into his arm from a bag slung over the bannister.  Claire Temple is getting better at scamming Mercy General for its valuable medical supplies.  Matt would applaud her if he could move his arms. 

            “Yeah,” he swallows thickly.  His saliva’s thicker than blood.  “I’m here.”

            “You want to tell me what I’m dealing with?” Claire tugs another suture into place.  His skin makes a stretching sound that no human should have to hear as it’s tugged back together. 

            Matt finds other sounds – less disturbing sounds: the storm brewing to the south of Manhattan, sirens over by Central Park, neighbour’s cat on the fire escape mewling to get inside.  He fixes on the sound of Claire’s breathing without even realizing it.  Her smell’s nice too.  The lingering trace of hospital in her clothing tells Matt he’s going to make it. 

            “Matt?” she nudges him.  The leg pain hits a fifteen on his revised scale.  Better than before, but promising to get worse for the morning.  It’s nothing compared to the ache he’s got going on his chest when his brain connects the dots and figures out who Claire sounds like.  “Matt, speak to me.”  
  
            He pretends they didn’t happen.  Not at Columbia, not anywhere.  Matt forgets that he even went to University.  He’s always been a masked vigilante, one of Stick’s good little soldiers.  “Just the leg,” he tells her, trying not to provoke more conversation.  “Bruising everywhere else.”  
  
            Claire snips the thread.  Matt can hear a tail of it bouncing from his leg when she finishes.  “Wanna tell me how it happened?”

            If they were dating, Matt would consider it his responsibility to enlighten her.  Since they’re not, he can say, “No.”  
  
            She doesn’t throw her hands up in defeat, just continues dressing his wounds with a fresh bandage.  They’ve come this far at least: past exasperation to resignation, just two people with a working relationship, though Matt’s confident they can both admit to having closer relationships with people they work with.  “You get the keep your leg…for now.  I’m leaving you with some antibiotics to make sure it doesn’t get infected.  I also have some T3s-”

            “Not necessary,” his dismissal is automatic.

            Claire continues as if she didn’t hear him, “-which you will probably want when you’re no longer in shock.”

            In case there’s any confusion, “I’m not taking them.”

            She sighs, “Just stay off your feet for the next twenty-four hours.   At least.”  
  
            Matt nods.  It’s all he can do.  He’s looking forward to melting back into the floor for a while, away from Claire’s too gentle hands and her familiar voice and the crumpling of his heart. 

            Claire doesn’t notice his discomfort, or if she does, she says nothing, just continues with his prognosis, “I couldn’t steal any blood for you tonight, so you’re not going to want to move around a lot anyways.  I texted Foggy, told him to bring you Gatorade.  Any preference on the flavour?”

            “It all tastes the same,” nothing tastes as good as she felt.  Matt snaps himself back to the present.  “Can I uh…stand up?  Get to bed?” 

            The silence scares him, as does the way her heart trochees in his ears.  Inquisitive Claire.  Dangerous Claire.  Her heart did that the whole time when he first met her.  “Is everything all right?  I thought we were past this cloak-and-dagger stuff.”  
  
            “More like costumed vigilante stuff.  And yeah, I’m all right.  I got stabbed.”  
  
            “These aren’t your usual knife wounds.”  
  
            Matt rubs at his face to hide what he’s sure is a deceptive expression.  He can lie to a lot of people, but he can’t lie to Claire, “I wasn’t paying attention.”

            She doesn’t buy it.  Her pulse is all, “How were you not paying attention to getting stabbed?”  At least when the Russians got to him, Matt had an excuse.  There’s no way he didn’t see whatever stabbed him twice in the calf.  Claire doesn’t grill him further though.  She’s learned better.  Instead, she stands up and comes to help him up.  Matt doesn’t give her the chance.  He pulls the blanket from his shoulders and hops up to his good foot before she can help.

            It’s a terrible idea: all pride, absolutely no care for consequence.  Matt nearly flips over the bannister towards a longer stay in the hospital.  He feels caught on a pendulum, swinging back and forth.  Claire catches him, holds him until he can hobble away from her and the phantom hands dragging him back to the past.  Before tonight.  To Columbia and first dates and hard falls into love or whatever passed for it at 19. 

            “Are you trying to fall?” Claire demands as Matt hops down the stairs.  He’s moving at a good clip for a guy with one working leg, and he’s still tethered to her by his IV. 

            “Trying to get to bed,” to sleep, to forgetting.  He won’t dream about her, he won’t.  He can’t.  She stabbed him.  Matt makes a point of not dreaming about people who stab him.  “For once, I’m following medical advice.”

            “Yeah, for once,” she laments.

            “I thought you’d be happy.”

            “Thrilled,” and absolutely positive that something’s up.

            Matt rounds the corner and slumps on the edge of the bed.  He starts pulling at his suit.  “You staying to watch?”

            Claire doesn’t respond to that.  She folds the sack of saline over his clock for the time being, detaching it from the port so he can get undressed.  She then raises her hands in mock surrender and walks out of the room. 

            He’s being an asshole to the wrong woman.  Where was all this on the rooftops when he was getting stabbed instead of at home getting stitched? 

            The stab wounds are not his only souvenirs.  Matt finds both his sides inflamed, dappled with would-be bruises.  He’s got a few scrapes too, but they’re close calls, dodges and swipes from a fight wasn’t ready for.  She’s fast but he’s still faster, just not fast enough to avoid getting impaled. 

            He is careful not to damage Claire’s handiwork as he prepares for bed.  Matt runs a hand over them, the two star shapes she’s stitched into his leg, future scars to add to his collection.  The prickles of pain send sparks through his world on fire.

            Foggy arrives once Matt’s sweatpants are on, but Claire stops him at the door for a hushed conversation Matt doesn’t bother to overhear.  He knows what’s being said, the worries that she’s expressing.  He can feel Foggy’s worry from where he sits, recognizes its textures.  The sound of it permeates everything Foggy does from the second he sets his duffel on the couch to the moment he gets to the bedroom doorway.  “Speak of the devil,” he says.

            “How long have you been waiting to use that one?” Matt asks, crawling under the covers. 

            “You don’t want to know,” Foggy replied. 

            Claire brushes past him.  She’s billowing like storm clouds in Matt’s ears.  She reattaches his IV.  Her bare fingertips strike his arm; he absorbs their touch like a punch to the gut.  No sooner has she finished, he dives under the covers.  Buries his face in the pillows.  Pretends they aren’t still talking about him as Claire leaves.

            He dreams about her.  The way she is now.

* * *

 

            She digs her claws into his calf and drags him awake kicking and screaming and on the bedroom floor.  Her claws are still buried in the meat, claiming his blood and muscles as her own.   

            “Matt!”

            “Agh, get her off me,” Matt grips at her wrist and tries to pull it away.  She’s bigger than her remembers, stronger too.  He reaches for her shoulders instead and ends up with two fists of an oversized sweater than smells like Foggy.

            “Matt, buddy,” the hands on his sides are wary but insistent.  They aren’t looking to hurt him, but Matt gets the impression he’s not supposed to be fighting.  Because his body can’t comprehend that fact, he’s finally told, “Matt, it’s me.  It’s Foggy.  You’re home and you’re safe…and bud, you’re kind of hurting me.”  
  
            It dawns on Matt that those are Foggy’s collarbones against his knuckles.  This is Foggy he’s trying to pry off him.  The command takes a long time to leech from his brain to his body.  Matt’s fingers slowly uncurl, his arms lower, his head hurts.  God, his head hurts.  Blood loss and nightmares are a brutal combination. 

            “Sorry,” he offers weakly.  The word doesn’t even begin to cover it.  Foggy’s found him lying in a pool of sweaty silk and has almost gotten punched in a case of mistaken identity.  Matt’s sensory perception is all over the place.  The room seems wrong – too big, then too small.  The walls are closing in – and climbing back into bed seems like a mistake.  She was all too fond of beds.  Matt’s happiest memories with her are in bed. 

            He claws for the mattress to help himself up.  Foggy hovers, muggy with sleep, but his hands have fallen away from Matt’s chest.  He takes a step back to give his friend room to move past him.  Matt hobbles towards the couch. 

            The sharp sting in his arm stops him, as does the slap of a half-empty bag of saline on the floor.  “I got it,” Foggy scampers to the task.  He takes his place behind Matt like a processional and waits to be led, to be useful.  Matt can’t bear the thought of it.  Foggy Nelson, best friend.  Supportive and helpful and exactly the sort of person Matt doesn’t want around when Violent Ghosts of Assassins Past show up to kill him.  Foggy’s still sporting bruises from attacking Stick; Matt shudders to think what will happen when his self-appointed wingman finds out who drilled two holes in his leg. 

            He’s so caught up in fearing for Foggy’s life that Matt clips the doorframe on his way to the living room.  His injured leg takes a hit too, making his perception flip sideways.  Floor to wall, wall to ceiling, ceiling to sky.  The air explodes with copper and salt.  A cry gets forced out his mouth.  There’s no room left in his body as the fire fills him.  The only respite he gets is from the empty hole in his chest, and even that throbs with an ache she used to keep at bay.

            He grabs hold of the first solid thing to come his way.  It’s Foggy.  Of course, it’s Foggy.  Matt’s arms find him without his brain wanting them too, and even though he’s kind of flailing and falling at the time, he ends up hauled back to his feet.  “I’ve got you,” Foggy assures him.  “I’ve got you.”

            “Foggy?” Matt’s breathing still isn’t under control, but nothing in his body is.  No amount of focusing or owning his pain or whatever the hell else advice he got from Stick helps.  He plants his arm on Foggy’s bicep and forces himself upright.  The doorframe that tried to kill him becomes his own strong point, “You’d tell me if you were an assassin, right?”

            “I’d tell everyone I was an assassin,” Foggy asserts.  “I’d keep an Instagram of all my kills, because I assume in this universe I’m also a psychopath.”  
  
            Matt can’t bring himself to laugh, “And if you were sent to kill me?”  
  
            “I would tell you every day just to keep you on your toes?  Are you…” Foggy is starting to think this might not a joke, “Are you worried that I might be an assassin?”

            “No,” the fire inside him subsides.  Matt takes a few cautionary steps toward the couch.  He can’t figure out where the table is, only knows that his apartment is out to get him tonight.  He has to stop and take stock, wait for the air currents and the sound of Foggy’s heartbeat to tell him where everything is.

            That seems to be taking too long, at least for Foggy.  He taps Matt on the bicep, “Two steps this way.  Take it slow.  Looks like your leg’s bleeding again.”

            Matt nods in thanks and does as he’s told.  Foggy’s instructions get him safely to the couch, where he drops like a tonne of bricks.  His head is a stuffed animal filled to burst.  One half of his broken heart has wandered into his throat and stays there, pounding.  Matt thinks he left the other half on the rooftops with her. 

            Foggy drapes the saline over the back of the couch by Matt’s head.  The sound of his footsteps frees Matt from his tightly-packed skull.  Foggy circles the couch, shifts through some of the bedding – oh, geez, this is where he was sleeping until Matt woke him up – and returns to Matt with a pillow that smells like his hair. 

            “Lift your leg for me,” he says.

            “I’m on your bed,” Matt replies, still finding verbal ways to not cover things like fighting Foggy off after a nightmare and taking away his place to sleep. 

            Foggy somehow gets all that though, or maybe he just doesn’t care.  One of the two.  “Lift your leg or I’ll lift it for you.  You’re getting blood on the floor, and your calf’s starting to look like a watermelon.”

            Matt stops arguing.  Foggy places a pillow underneath his wounded calf and gently elevates Matt’s leg onto the coffee table.  It’s the best and worst feeling in the whole world.  Matt starts to feel what blood he has left circulating, creating a whirlpool in his empty chest and dowsing some of the cotton in his skull.  Thinking gets easier.  The dimensions of the apartment are perceptible again. 

            Foggy starts unwrapping the bandage though, interrupting all that.  Matt shifts, “Give me a minute.”  He’s enjoying the sounds of his own circulatory system, the feeling that his body’s returning to homeostasis, even if the pain in his leg is still oscillating between a 7 and a 16. 

            “Look, I know how you are about pain meds…”

            “No,” Matt’s self-control is already tenuous.  He’s one mention of her away from tears.  Introducing prescription pain meds into his system is just asking to sob into the arm of the couch.  Which he did, by himself, the night it ended.  The night she left. 

            Foggy abandons the topic entirely.  “I need to check and see if you popped a stitch.”

            “I don’t feel a popped stitch,” Matt wiggles his toes to get a better idea.  He ratchets the pain all the way up to an eighteen, because physical agony trumps emotional trauma any day.  “I just bashed the blood out with the door frame.”

            “None of that stops you from getting an infection,” Foggy holds his leg up by the ankle and starts unraveling.  Matt embraces the agony the way he held her: with wild and reckless abandon.  With a great swell of elation because he was finally understood.  Figures that she would end up stabbing him all these years later, really.  She was a perfect match to a flawless flame. 

            “Whoa, Matt, hey, I’ll stop,” Foggy sets his leg back down.

            Matt can’t figure out what Foggy’s all worked up over, until the warm, damp rivers on his cheeks register.  They smell of straight saline, of Claire, and Matt wishes she was here instead of Foggy.  Wishes he didn’t leave her that night when Fisk blew up half his city.  Wishes that love wasn’t this relentless comedy of errors and tragedy of circumstance.  He wipes away his tears, “No, it’s fine, Foggy.  It’s not that.  It’s fine.  I’m fine.”

            He is fine.  He is.  Isn’t he?

            Foggy lays a hand on the table.  He’s a mess of signals that Matt doesn’t know how to read.  Heart rate and temperature elevated, posture slumped, loaded silence that may or may not be resolved.  “I could really use an explanation here, Matt,” Foggy says flatly.  No hint of an ultimatum, just a request.  Matt’s already suffering enough. 

            The words just sit there on his tongue.  He knows their order, even has a pretty good explanation lined up in his head, but moving them out into the word is impossible.  Brain tells mouth to move; mouth refuses.  The silence sounds better than whatever he might say.  Matt swallows the explanation and the half of his broken heart still in his throat.  “I just had a really bad night,” he hopes that’s honest enough for Foggy to leave him alone.

            “I’ve seen you after some really bad nights,” Foggy presses lightly.  He tugs the rest of the bandage off.  Matt’s tongue gets thick with the taste of blood from the air.  Foggy sighs, “You’re right.  Stitches are all in place.”  
  
            “Told you so.”  
  
            “Yeah,” Foggy agrees sadly.  He retreats to the kitchen, wets a cloth from the sink, returns.  He’s careful when cleaning the blood off Matt’s skin, which is, unfortunately, not saying a lot.  The heat from the area tells Matt the bruising is going to be worse than the actual stab wounds.  “Can I at least know how you got these?”  
  
            Matt feels more tears in his eyes.  He can taste the explanation at the back of his throat, a hunk of rock in his esophagus.  “I just had a bad night,” there’s an unmistakeable trace of a whimper when he speaks.  “It was just a really, really bad night.”  
  
            “Matt…”

            The first tear cuts a new line down his cheek.  Matt swipes it away.  “I can’t do this, Foggy.”

            “What?”

            “I can’t...there’s just…” he’s fumbling for words, tearing through his vocabulary for the ones that don’t have anything to do with her.  But everything he’s ever been belonged to her once and now he’s hers again.  Once upon a time that meant long afternoons wrapped around each other.  Now it means that she stabs him in the leg in lieu of stabbing him in the chest.  “I don’t know what to say.”  
  
            Foggy’s voice has reached that sympathetic pitch, the one that runs just above his normal register.  “Can you start with what you got stabbed with?”   

            Matt can’t stop the halves of his heart from trying to race out of his chest.  He can’t see the harm in not saying, but he knows Foggy’s tactic too well to start speaking.  One word answers are the gateway to longer explanations.  About the only thing missing from this equation is alcohol, which is Foggy’s other preferred opener to an interrogation.  Matt purses his lips and breathes through his nose and, “A sai.”

            Fuck.  There.  He said it.  “She fights with sais,” he feels more tears falling down his cheeks and can’t wipe them away fast enough.

            Foggy keeps pulling the information out of him, “She?”

            Matt hugs himself and locks his jaw.  He doesn’t bother wiping away his tears.  Conversation over.  That’s all he saying. 

            The silence in the apartment is oppressive, especially when Foggy punctuates it with such supportive sounds.  Scrubbing blood off Matt’s leg, tearing open a new package of bandages: the only noise he generates is all for Matt’s benefit.  Matt hates it and wants to be alone.  He’s acting like a kid, all weepy and broken hearted.  This is just a fight.  He lost.  Big deal. 

            Stick’s words in his head on repeat.  Matt cringes.  His ears open back up to the sounds of Foggy getting a glass of water in the kitchen.  Christ, the old man really did do a number on him.  He has one person in the world he can count as a friend to both him and the Mask.  Someone who comes in the middle of the night to make sure he’s not alone with the nightmares hit, when he bursts into tears because she tried to murder him, and he can’t even dignify that person with an answer as to why he’s a mess.

            Foggy presses the glass against his quivering bicep.  Matt takes it.  He sips it and the rock in his throat erodes.  Foggy takes a seat in the chair next to him, sighing.  He’s about to say something distracting, if his heartbeat is any indication.  Matt doesn’t let him.

            “I need you to pretend that you don’t care about me,” Matt says. 

            “Yeah, I can’t do that,” Foggy rubs his face tiredly.  Exhaustedly.  It’s a tough call as to who gets less sleep between the two of them anymore.

            Matt begs him, “I need you to try.”  
  
            “If I try not to care, will you tell me what’s up?”  
  
            “Yes.”  
  
            “Okee-dokee.  Not-caring about you right now.  Go.”  
  
            Foggy still cares.  Matt can feel him caring all the way from the couch.  Foggy’s body temperature rises subtly.  His posture goes taut, like a bow string.  He holds his gaze on Matt intensely.  “Foggy, you are being too good of a friend for me to say this,” Matt notes.

            “You can hear yourself, right?  You know how weird this sounds?”

            Matt nods.  He can hear a lot more than himself, and it all sounds off.  “You told me I needed to work on letting people help.”  
  
            “Yeah, people that you care about and who care about you.”  
  
            “Yeah, well, I can’t do that.  I can’t tell you this and have you care about me.”

            “Why?”  
  
            “Because I don’t know what to do with that!” there.  He says it.  And the world keeps spinning. 

            Foggy does not.  He is way too tired to keep progressing through time and space, “You don’t have to do anything.  I care about you.  That’s my problem.”

            “It becomes my problem.”

            “How?”

            “When you try to fix things for me.  Like attacking Stick.”

            “You said that was adorable!”  
  
            “I said I appreciated it,” he would not use the word ‘adorable’ for what happened between Foggy and Stick, “But I can’t have you putting yourself in harm’s way just to make me feel better.  I won’t let you care about me like that,” Matt takes a deep breath.  Foggy does too.  The silence rages on with their unspoken agree-to-disagree.  “You have to promise that you aren’t going to do anything about this.  Understand?”

            “I promise.”  
  
            His voice is so mechanical, Matt doesn’t even have to listen to his heart, “Don’t lie to me.”  
  
            “Fine.  Truth: that’s the dumbest thing you’ve ever asked me to do,” and then, after remembering something far worse, “Addendum: that’s the second dumbest thing you’ve ever asked me to do.  You don’t get to decide my life for me.  I can’t be your friend and stand idly by while you get your ass handed to you.  That can’t be how this works anymore.  And if that’s the way you want it, than I should have stayed gone.”  
  
            God damn it, the tears are coming back.  Matt’s having flashback to the night after Nobu, of Foggy storming out of his apartment, “I can’t have you die because of me.”

            “So let me know what I’m up against, Matt,” Foggy leans over the arm rest towards him.  He doesn’t touch Matt, doesn’t even reach out to try, but his proximity guards against Matt’s paranoia of losing everyone again.  Of becoming the kind of warrior Stick wanted him to be.  “You know why people close to the hero die in comic books?  Because the hero doesn’t let them know the kind of evil that’s after him.”

            “I’m not a hero.”  
  
            “Masked vigilante crime-fighter?  Defender of Hell’s Kitchen?  Uh, yeah, Matt, you’re kind of a hero,” point made, Foggy settles back down into his chair.  “That makes me your…” he thinks about it for a long moment.  Matt finds the edges of his mouth curling into an anticipatory smile.  “What’s less involved than a sidekick but better than some stoolie who doesn’t know your identity?”  
  
            Matt doesn’t really want to show how much he knows about the Avengers Initiative, but Tony Stark is just so dam public, “My JARVIS?”

            “Yes!” Foggy smacks a hand against the seat, “I’m your JARVIS!  Actually, no, I am your Pepper Potts.  Badass ginger President of Stark Industries.  Entitled to half of your enormous assets – pun intended.”  
  
            Matt doesn’t feel like smiling by he does anyways.  “I take it I’m Tony Stark in this metaphor?”

            “And I bet Tony Stark doesn’t keep Pepper Potts in the dark about all the bad guys who come after him.”  
  
            “Didn’t she get kidnapped for precisely that reason a couple of years ago?”

            Foggy snaps his fingers.  He has Matt beat, “Uh, no, she got kidnapped because Tony didn’t tell her that someone was after him.  And Pepper wasn’t even threatening to go after that guy.  Imagine what we could do together, Murdock and Nelson-”

            “Nelson and Murdock.”

            “The Human Pin Cushion-”

            “Oh, God…”

            “-and Sarcasm Lad!  If you just told me _who the hell stabbed you in the leg with a sai_.”  
  
            Matt sighs three times in a row.  He twitches from the phantom tapping of a sai point against his leg bone and the angry, molten heat from both his stab wounds.  His mind goes back to Foggy’s swollen face after the fight with Stick.  How he listened to his friend’s body for broken bones or a stopped heart.  “I can’t drag you into my world,” he admits quietly.  He’s sure Foggy can translate what he’s saying as, “I can’t have anyone else die because of me.”

            “Who’s being dragged?  I’m asking.”  
  
            “You don’t know what you’re asking.”

            “So let me know.”

            The rock rolls itself back into Matt’s throat.  He takes another long drink of water, empties the glass, hesitates to put it down on the table.  At least with the glass in his mouth he isn’t expected to talk.  The water drains down his throat and seems to disappear in his chest.  That blackhole, that vacancy, is spreading.  Swallowing him up completely.  He’s going to disappear into the Mask to keep from dealing with her. 

            Her.  She.  Matt’s lips shudder. 

            “Elektra Natchios.”

            He hugs himself tighter.  Her name lingers in the apartment, perfectly at home with the smell of blood. 

            Foggy doesn’t get it, “What?”  
  
            “You don’t remember the name Elektra Natchios?”  
  
            “I don’t remember the…wait, that’s…the Greek girl from Spanish class?”

            “Yeah.”  
  
            “What about her?”

            Matt can’t say it.  He just gestures towards his leg and lets the clean bandages do the talking.

            Foggy leans forward in his chair.  His pulse is picking up to a horrified clip.  “Your ex stabbed you in the leg?”

            “Yeah, she’s some kind of assassin, I think.”  
  
            “An assassin?”  
  
            Matt nods, “I think.”  
  
            Foggy processes the thought in surround sound.  Heart racing, breath quickening, eyes shifting: Matt’s dizzy from all the micro-activity by the time Foggy speaks again, “Did she know it was you?  Under the Mask, I mean?”

            “I don’t know,” Matt hopes not.  “She was always hard to read."

            “You told me it didn’t work out…” Foggy breathes a sigh of exasperation.  “Did you know she was an assassin when you were in school?”  
  
            Matt shakes his head, “She wasn’t an assassin then.”

            “How do you know?”  
  
            “You’re just going to have to trust me on that,” because Matt sure as hell is not sharing.  He already feels like he’s given too much away.  Their break-up – which exceeds even Matt’s revised pain scale – is going to stay private for a while.  He has to give Foggy a little more to keep him off the scent though, so Matt justifies his reasoning by saying, “She was really wonderful when we were…you know…”

            _Dating?_ Is that what they were doing?  It seemed a lot more than that to Matt, but as Foggy tells him, it always seems like more than that to Matt. 

            Foggy doesn’t take the liberty of filling in that statement.  He knows better than to push for the time being.  He also knows better than to apologize, for which Matt is grateful.  The quiet comes to take on a less menacing quality in the wake of his confession.  Matt still feels like his inside are coming apart, like his heart’s free floating in pieces and the black hole in his chest has a painful gravitation pull.  His leg is still burning too.  But he kind of appreciates it, the fact that confession isn’t a magical cure all for a terrible night.  That there isn’t a moral, a rhyme, or a reason.  Terrible things happen, and sometimes the only thing to do is just let them be terrible.  Almost getting killed by an ex-turned-assassin was one of those terrible things. 

            “Thank you, Foggy.”  
  
            “I didn’t do anything.”  
  
            Matt nods, “Thank you.”

            Foggy is not happy, “This doesn’t mean I’m never going to do anything.”

            “I know,” Matt makes the mistake of trying to turn and upsets the fire in his leg.  He hisses through the agony but stays focused on the conversation at hand, “This is enough.”

            “What about tomorrow?” Foggy wonders.  “What if she comes back?  What if she does know who you are?”

            “She would be here by now if she knew,” Matt confesses sadly.  “And she would…” he doesn’t finish.  Can’t finish.  There’s not enough blood in his body to support the blood drenching his apartment walls in his mind if she finds them.  The only saving grace is that she isn’t here.  She’s still out there looking for a man in a devil costume, not her ex from college.  “We’ll deal with tomorrow, tomorrow.  Your way.  Legally.”  
  
            “And then what?  I don’t think the law is going to help us take someone down for stabbing the vigilante Daredevil in the leg.”

            Matt doesn’t want to say it either, but he has to, “Then I’ll deal with her my way.”

            Foggy sums up their situation succinctly: “This sucks.”

            “Yep,” he fixes his blind eyes somewhere around where Foggy’s sitting.  “Still want to be a part of my world?”  
  
            “Better the devil I know than the one I don’t,” Foggy shrugs.

            The sounds of the city permeate the apartment.  Matt counts the sirens in the distance, the peel of tires against the asphalt, his neighbour’s apartment window opening and the cat being let back outside.  For some reason, in all the auditory chaos, it dawns on him: “How long have you been waiting to use that one?”

            Foggy sounds almost asleep, but he still answers, “Ever since I found out.”

            “You have any more?”  
  
            “Plenty.  I made a list.  ‘m saving them for special occasions.”  
  
            Matt huffs another breathless laugh, “Thank you, Foggy.”

            “I haven’t done anything,” he replies gruffly, curling into the chair out of frustration with himself.  “You got stabbed by an evil ex-girlfriend-”

            “She’s not evil.”

            “She stabbed you.  That makes her evil.  For now.  And I didn’t do anything but bring you a glass of water.  I didn’t even try to tell you everything will be alright.”  
  
            “There’s nothing to do tonight that’ll make me feel better,” Matt admits with a sad nod, “but I don’t feel any worse.”

            Foggy shifts a little on the chair, grumbling, incapable of finding a comfortable position, “I am the worst Pepper Potts ever.”

            “But you are a terrific Foggy Nelson,” Matt says sweetly, sarcastically.

            “And you’re a terrific Matthew Murdock,” Foggy’s voice is just as sardonic as his.  He sits up in the chair.  “We’re actually not doing anything tonight?”  
  
            “I’m going to sit up for a while.  Go ahead, Foggy.  Take the bed.  Get some sleep.”  
  
            “Okay,” Foggy stands up from the chair.  He marches tiredly to the bedroom, “But you wake me up if you need anything.” 

            He isn’t going to need anything, “Good night, Foggy.”  
  
            “I’m serious.”  
  
            “Good night, Foggy.”  
  
            Foggy walks right into the mattress and flops onto it, apparently intending to sleep like that.  He grumbles something unintelligibly, something about Pepper Potts and Tony Stark, but then he’s asleep. 

            Matt continues listening to the city, hoping he’ll catch the sounds of her light footsteps on the rooftop or the tang of her sais in the air.  He wonders where she is, who she’s working for, if she’s nursing her wounds in private too as the city races towards daylight. 

            Wonders if she’s thinking about him.

            Wonders if she’s thinking about the Devil.

            Wonders which is worse. 

 

* * *

 

Happy reading!


	12. ...Foggy Gets Sick

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Foggy’s fine. Even the muppet says so. Then again, the muppet’s also trying to kill him.  
> Maybe it’s time to call Matt?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: the characters and concepts in this story are the property of Marvel and their related affiliates. This is an amateur writing effort meant for entertainment purposes only.
> 
> This started off as a valiant experiment to rid myself of writer’s block, turned into just about the most ridiculous fic I’ve ever written this side of crackfic, and then, just when I thought it was all feel-good and ridiculous, things got real. I hope it doesn’t feel too much like whiplash. 
> 
> Thank you to the reviewers who requested a Sick!Foggy fic. This isn’t a perfect role reversal since the hospital gets involved, apologies, but I will have more of that in a later installment. Also, Taranea requested a Blind!Foggy where Matt still Daredevils. I borrowed the latter part of that prompt here. 
> 
> Readers, I adore you all. Thank you so much for the kind support on this fic. Please enjoy this installment!

* * *

...Foggy Gets Sick

 

            Foggy’s hallucinations – that’s what they’re called! He’s been trying to remember the word– are getting worse not better, but he’s coherent enough not to call for help.  Important things are happening in the city tonight: dangerous, criminal things that only Daredevil can stop, much more important than how high his fever gets or how much mucous is building in his lungs or how disturbing his visions are become.  “Besides,” Foggy tells the red, vaguely crocodilian, devil-horned, giant-fanged muppet watching him from the shadows, “I am doing _just fine_.  Underlined.  And italicized.  That’s how fine I am.

            “Take that, Matt Murdock,” for whom fine is always unconvincingly emphasized.  Also, wasn’t it Matt who said call if he needed anything?  Well, Foggy doesn’t need anything.  “Because I’m _fine_.   Fine.  **FINE**.” 

            He turns over on the couch currently serving as his bed and tries to think about how awful he doesn’t feel, but he loses focus quickly and watches the colours of the upholstery curl before his eyes.  Wispy tendrils of red and green dance like smoke through his vision, twisting themselves into balloon animals.  The one on the right looks like John Lennon, if John Lennon were a walrus – an actual, literal walrus instead of a figurative one because everyone knows Lennon was the walrus either way.  The other bears a striking resemblance to Karen. 

            “Let the fuckers work that one out,” John Lennon tells him, and Foggy believes this is good advice.  “But seriously, Mr. Lennon, watch your mouth around Karen,” he says, “She is a Queen, and you will treat her as such.”  The swirls dance away from him: Walrus John Lennon turns into Vladimir Ilyich Lenin delivering a moving speech that’s completely incomprehensible to Foggy, because it’s in Russian.  Yet another language he doesn’t speak. 

            “Hey, listen,” the muppet’s footfalls are almost too soft to hear, but Foggy can tell he’s getting closer, “I think Lenin is right.  You really shouldn’t be working at your deadbeat firm anymore.”

            Foggy flips over on the couch, “Okay, what the hell do you know?  You’re a muppet.”

            The muppet humphs, folds his felt arms over his stick-like chest.  He’s a creepy little demon-beast, one drawn from the hellish depths of Henson’s imagination.  Like a devil except worse, because he looks just normal enough for a muppet to pass for a children’s show mascot.  “Wait a second, wait a second,” Foggy sits up on the couch.  “You’re from Smile Time!  You’re here to drain life out of me!”  
  
            “Are you kidding?  That’s a fucking t.v. show inside another t.v. show.”  
  
            “Would you watch your mouth around Karen?” Foggy demands.  “I’m sorry, Karen.”

            She’s sitting next to him on the couch, smiling and blushing and looking about as translucent as possible.  “It’s okay, Foggy.  I’ve heard way worse than that.”  
  
            “See?” the muppet is right up in Foggy’s face now.  Foggy jumps back, crawling over the back of the couch to get away.  “Would you calm down?  I’m not here to steal your soul!”  
  
            Foggy lands as ungracefully as possible on the hardwood.  He gets up to his knees – no further – and starts scampering through the kitchen for a weapon.  The muppet comes around to the other side of the couch.  “You stay away from me,” Foggy says, “You stay away or I will cut you.”

            “You’ll only be cutting yourself,” the muppet rolls his head, because his eyes are black dots painted on white balls.  “That’s how hallucinations work, dummy.”

            “I’ll call Daredevil.  I’ll call him and he’ll come and throw you out the window.”  
  
            “He would only be throwing you out the window.  Jesus Murphy, do you really not know how hallucinations work?”  
  
            “I know how hallucinations work.  I went to law school!” Foggy hopes that the louder he makes the argument, the truer it is.  Reality isn’t playing fair right now, so he doesn’t feel compelled to either. 

            Evidently, that’s not how hallucinations work either.  That devil shaped muppet is creeping closer and closer to him.  Foggy fumbles around himself for a weapon, comes up with a handful of dirty silverware.  He holds it between his fingers like claws and swats.  “Keep away from me!”  
  
            “Okay, look,” the muppet holds out his hands.  “I’m just here to tell you a couple of really important things, alright?  Can I do that without you scratching our face off?”  
  
            “You mean _your_ face?” Foggy demands, swatting again.

            “No, I mean _our_ face.  You scratch me, you’re scratching yourself.  That’s the first thing I was going to tell you,” the muppet holds out its felt hand with two claws raised.  “Second, your friend the Daredevil?  He is going to die.”

            Foggy throws the silverware aside, “Okay, you listen to me for a second, because I have some things to tell you.”  He holds up one finger, “We are all going to die!  You, me, everbody!  All of us!  It’s called mortality!”

            “Yeah, sure, whatever: I’m saying he’s going to die soon.  Without you knowing it.  He might even be dying right now.  Did you ever think of that?”

            “Matt’s not dying.”

            “How do you know?”  
  
            “Because I would know, I would…I would feel it or something.  He and I are…we’re like…” words are failing him.  Foggy knows they’re in his head somewhere, hidden around all the little nooks and crannies in his brain-space.  But every time he reaches for one it slips through his fingers like an eel and splatters into bloodstains.  The muppet shoots him a look of pure incredulity, which is impressive not only for a hallucinated muppet but especially for one without eyebrows.  It pisses Foggy right off, “What the hell do you know?  If we’re the same, then you know as much as I do, and I say I would know if Matt was dead.  He’s not dead.”  
  
            “Clearly, I’m the part of you that figured it out then,” the muppet waggles his fanged jaw out of sync with his voice track for a moment.  The distortion calls attention to all the other things that shouldn’t be happening in Foggy’s vision.  His kitchen should not be melting.  There should not be a teeming horde of spiders crawling out of his ceiling fan.  The dishes should not be humming one of the songs from _Beauty and the Beast_.  He’s too hot, the light’s too bright, and he wants to leave but his body isn’t working. 

            He uses the last of his strength to say, “I’d feel it if he was gone.”

            The muppet comes and sits down next to him.  Bright red, about as long as Foggy’s arm, he looks like a serpent from a bird’s eye view.  “The truth is we wouldn’t know.  And really, with the guys who would do it, they might never even find a body.  He may just never come back.”

            “I can’t breathe…” Foggy wants to say it’s from shock or grief, but neither of those things account for how tight his airway feels, how much grit lies between his lungs and his mouth.  He heaves, hacks, and coughs up something gelatinous, something that lands on his kitchen floor and scampers away.  He screams and grabs the muppet for protection.  When he looks, Foggy finds that the muppet is screaming too. 

            “Matt might be dead!” Foggy yells.

            “He already is dead!” the muppet yells back.

            “You take that back,” he throws the muppet down against the cupboards.  The impact makes his own butt hurt, but he so does not care.  “You take it back, because it’s not true.  I would know.  I would know and it would…God, it would hurt.”  It would hurt way worse than everything that hurts now, that’s for sure.  More than the burning soup in his lungs, the molten lava clinging to his throat.  Foggy hurts all over, and none of that, he knows, would compare to the pain of losing Matt.  Losing Matt and never knowing where he was or what happened to him. 

            Foggy can see the image of Matt in the East River so clearly in his head that the next thing he knows, his kitchen floor is covered in a thin layer of cold water.  He stands up and walks away from it, back to the couch, but he doesn’t make it.  He slips, lands on the floor, and tries to crawl. 

            His cell phone.  He needs his phone.  
  
            “What are you doing?”

            “I’m calling Matt.  I’m calling him.  I’m going to show you…” Foggy shoots a finger around the apartment, trying to point at the muppet, but the muppet’s gone.  Disappeared.  Just as well, Foggy figures, because he really was going to throw the damn thing out the window.  He gets his phone and tries to dial the number.  His fingers won’t work though.  They leave long sticky streams of sweat on the screen and hit the wrong spaces.  He taps his home key twice.  “Hello, Google,” he demands, “Call DD.”

            “There’s no number for Dd in your address book,” Google tells him.  “Would you like to try another number?”

            “Oh, right,” Foggy says again.  The phone spins out of focus.  He blinks and almost does open his eyes.  “Call-“

            He coughs so hard he drops the phone.  His eyes water.  He feels his lungs peeling themselves off the walls of his chest, and Foggy tries to cough them up, out, because he needs air, there’s not enough room, and that’s how pain works.  You pull out the big stuff and everything feels better.  He’ll feel better.  Just cough.  Get it all out. 

            Foggy ends up on the floor, the hardwood cool under his burning cheek.  “I will never leave this floor again,” he declares, fumbling for his phone.  “Hello, Google,” he drags his phone closer.  The screen is all cracked.  “Google, Google, call,” he lowers his voice to a whisper, “Daredevil…”

            Google thinks about it, “There’s no number for Daredevil in your address book.  Would you like to try again?”  
  
            “DAMN IT, GOOGLE!” he throws his phone.  The sound of the screen cracking reminds him that’s the wrong phone.  Matt’s Daredevil number is on the burner cell, on the phone adjacent to his actual phone.  Foggy reaches for it, flips it open.  He has less luck with this one than he did with the first, especially when he starts shouting, “Hello, Google!” and the phone doesn’t respond.

            “Call Matt,” he begs the phone.  “Please, just call him.  Call Matt.  Tell him I need to know if he’s alive.  I need to know…” Foggy hits send.  He gets a number not in service.  He tosses the phone.  Can’t breathe, can’t breathe.  He’s choking and there’s nothing he can do but sit alone, in his apartment, trying to psychically tell his best friend to call him. 

            Matt’s telepathic abilities must not work in the mask.  Foggy tries a more direct route.  He gets up and staggers over to the window.  The floor wobbles under his feet with every step, and he trips up at the last minute.  He tumble feet over head up towards the ceiling and would keep going if he didn’t grab the window sill.

            “MATT!” he screams.  “MATT, CAN YOU HEAR ME?!”

            Someone shouts back at him.  It’s not Matt.  Matt doesn’t say things like that to him in anger.  When Matt gets angry with Foggy he gets angry at himself.  Foggy sinks back down to the floor to think about that for a while. 

            Lying on his back, his chest seizes up.  Foggy has to turn onto his side just to get some air in, and even then, he’s feeling his fingers tingle.  They’re starting to turn blue, then purple, then they disappear like couch-Karen did all those eons ago. 

            This could be his sign.

            Foggy’s eyes fly open.  He sits straight up and tries to line up his feet underneath him.  He can’t breathe.  His lungs are filled with gooey spiders.  This is the sign he was waiting for.  The fucking hallucinatory muppet was right.  Matt is dead, he’s floating in the rver, and Foggy has to go bring his body back for a proper Catholic burial.  Or some impromptu reanimation on the kitchen table.  Foggy watched enough _Penny Dreadful_ to know that it’s entirely possible to bring someone back from the dead with a basin of water and some lightning. 

            “Where are you going?” the muppet demands.  He keeps to Foggy’s side as Foggy searches the apartment for everything he needs.

            “I’m going to find Matt.  I’m going to make sure that he gets a Catholic burial.  Or that he gets brought back from the dead,” he should probably call Claire to make sure that’s possible.  He picks up both his phones, dials a different number on each – doubling his chances that one of them is Claire – and ends up speaking to two completely different people on each phone. 

            “I’m going to find Matt!” he declares.

            “I think you have the wrong number,” one person says.

            The other person sounds like Karen, “Foggy?  Are you okay?”

            “I have to find Matt,” he tells her.  He tosses the other phone.  “I have to find him.  He’s in danger.  Actually, he’s dead.  Tell her, muppet.  Tell her how Matt is dead…” the stupid muppet won’t take the phone.  Just keeps looking at Foggy like he’s the crazy one here.   
  
            “I’m coming over,” Karen says.  “You’re still at your apartment, right, Foggy?”

            “Yes, but I have to go.  Hey, if you’re coming over,” he coughs, “can you bring a person-sized basin and a car battery?  We may need to shock Matt’s whole body provided he isn’t too dead.”  
  
            “Yes, sure, anything.  But, Foggy, can you wait at your apartment for me to come?  I uh…I want to help you find Matt.”

            “Karen, the muppet is going to help me find Matt.”  Obviously.  “The muppet is a part of me or something.  We’re like joined on a spiritual quest.”

            She’s both desperate and embarrassed, “I would just really like to come with you.  I um…I’m really scared about Matt, and I want to know that he’s okay.  So can you and the muppet please wait?  Please?”

            Foggy sighs.  The muppet is shaking his lizard head like crazy, mouthing words like ‘no’ and ‘hell no’ and ‘fuck no’ and ‘biblioteca’.  Foggy ignores the stupid muppet, “Okay, we’ll wait.  Just please don’t be long.  I think Matt’s in the Hudson River.”  
  
            He hangs up on her so she can get moving.  They don’t have much time.

            “We aren’t allowed to do this!” the muppet yells.  He is looking even more fearsome now, glossy red and scaly like a real crocodile, with teeth that are disproportionate to his face and tiny devil horns like Matt’s. 

            Foggy does not have time to ponder the mechanics of a muppet’s centre of balance, especially a muppet who’s conjured from his imagination.  “We’re going to find Matt.  He’s dead, I need to bring him back,” he heads for his bedroom and can’t find it because he’s headed towards his front door.  He doubles back, finds his bathroom.  “Can you help me, please?  I need actual clothes.”  
  
            “Humph,” the muppet pouts.

            “You are the worst spirit animal ever,” Foggy tells him and finds his bedroom.  He trips on a pile of clothing and bed sheets and old LPs.  The whole room rotates around him like a hypercube and when he looks up, he’s on the wall.  He slides back down onto the floor. 

            The muppet comes into the room and punches Foggy in the ribs.  “You can’t save him, you know that?  That was the third thing I came here to tell you.”

            “What were the first two?” Foggy demands.  He punches the muppet right back, absorbing the pain he causes himself. 

            “Stop hitting yourself!” the muppet screams, smacking Foggy in the chest. 

            Coughing, spluttering, mouth full of phlegmy spiders, Foggy slams a fist down on the muppet’s plush head.  His own face folds forward into the floor and then reconstitutes, exactly like a muppet head ought to. 

            He hasn’t finished coughing before the muppet punches him in the face and then hops on top of his chest. 

            “You can’t save him!” the muppet wraps his muppet arms around Foggy’s neck and starts squeezing.  “You can’t save him!  YOU CAN’T SAVE HIM!”

            Foggy grabs the muppet’s plush body and tears.  His mouth flaps uselessly, like a fish out of water, struggling to breathe.  He kicks, he punches, he flails on the ground, and the stupid muppet just squeezes harder and harder until he’s pretty sure his lungs are going to burst and there’s fire in his chest and fire in his face and fire everywhere, kind of like drowning like Matt’s doing in the river drowning down, down, down….

            Darkness.

* * *

 

            The muppet is still on his neck when Foggy wakes up, “Ugh…get off me.”

            He can’t raise his arms.  They’re too heavy.  Everything’s too heavy.  All the molten lava in his body has cooled and hardened into solid rock.  Even Foggy’s eyelids are frozen shut.  There’s a steady stream of air slamming into his nose and mouth. 

            Still, the muppet lingers, squeezing lightly on his neck.  All the air is stuck in his mouth, and his chest is telling him, rather insistently, that’s not where air belongs.  “Get off…” he shifts, struggles, can’t.  Just can’t. 

            “Foggy,” Karen’s hand is on his.  “Foggy, what’s wrong?”  
  
            “Stupid muppet,” Foggy curses.  His eyelids open to slits.  There’s nothing but blurry shapes and swaths of fog, but lingering just in front of him is a cloud with Karen’s hair colour.  The cloud doesn’t look the least bit horrified that he’s swearing; the cloud is emanating concern.  Foggy tries again for cloud-Karen, this time in full sentences, “He’s on my neck, Karen.  Get him off.”  
  
            Cloud-Karen starts to look more like person-Karen.  More defined every time Foggy blinks.  She runs a cool hand over his neck, banishing that muppet’s phantom grasp.  “Gone?” she asks.

            Foggy isn’t sure.  He can still kind of feel the bastard keeping him from breathing.  He finally loosens a hand from the grips of his new stone joints and raises it to his face.  There’s a plastic mask covering his nose and mouth; he scrubs it out of the way.  It hurts his face. 

            Karen’s hands are there too, guiding his away from his face and putting the mask back to where it belongs, “That’s helping, Foggy.  Just leave that alone.”

            He drops his hand back by his side.  The room drifts slowly into focus.  White lights, blue blankets, a heart monitor beeping in the background.  He answers the question that he knows from experience Karen is waiting to ask, “Uh…I’m in the hospital.” 

            “Yeah, I…I called an ambulance when I couldn’t get into your place.  I heard you through the door.  You were having…” she looks down at her hands in her lap.  Foggy finally places what he’s hearing in her voice: Karen’s been crying.  “You were having some kind of fit in the bedroom.  You weren’t getting enough air, because there was so much crap in your lungs.”

            He lets his eyes close as it all comes drifting back to him.  “I was taking antibiotics,” he remembers.  “Must not have been working fast enough.”

            “I’m just so glad you called, Foggy.  If you’d been alone...” Karen doesn’t want to think about that, so she doesn’t say anymore.  She holds Foggy’s hand in hers.  “Ummm…Matt’s okay too, by the way?” she smiles to keep from crying some more. 

            Foggy is about to ask why Matt wouldn’t be okay when that comes screaming back to him too.  Matt in the river.  Matt dying.  “Right.  Good.”  
  
            “He’s on his way here.  Took him a while to answer my calls, but it is the middle of the night,” she says with a nod.  “I’m sure the doctors will let him in even though it’s way past visiting hours.”  
  
            “Hmmm…”

            Karen prods at the blanket, tugging it this way and that next to Foggy’s hand.  He can see her, even through mostly closed eyes, in perfect clarity, all her edges sharply defined in the low light.  She’s got her thinking face on – lips pursed, eyes narrowed – and he can practically feel the energy behind her ideas building up steam until they pour into the world, “Why did you think Matt was in the Hudson River?”

            Heaven help him, Foggy almost tells her.  She already knows something’s up, and she’s probably already working several theories.  Not to mention that keeping secrets and telling lies – mostly terrible lies – is really starting to wear on Foggy, probably more than the pneumonia is.  For a moment, he entertains the sweet, sweet thought that telling her is the last step in his recovery.  It’s the price he has to pay for his illness to clear up.  Pneumonia is the universe’s way of reminding him to be a good friend to more than just Matt. 

            He suppresses the urge with tired arguments, still strong but losing their mettle from overuse: it’s not his secret to tell.  Matt deserves his privacy.  The less Karen knows, the better.  This is for her protection.  Hard to justify keeping Karen in the dark when he’s sinking deeper and deeper in Matt’s world each day.  But that’s a conversation to have with Matt first.  Foggy’s morality runs in all directions. 

            “The stupid muppet told me he was dead,” Foggy answers her question.  Her eyes – full, round, and regal - turn to him, meeting his, locking, like she’s searching for trace of…no, nevermind.  Karen lowers her gaze, embarrassed.  Foggy doesn’t feel tremendously guilty.  He’s not exactly lying.  The hallucinatory muppet did tell him Matt was dead.  The fact that he thinks about Matt dying a lot, specifically in the river, doesn’t need to be mentioned. 

            “Is this the same muppet that was strangling you a minute ago?” Karen risks a small smile.

            “Bastard, homicidal, hallucination-muppet…”

            Karen nods, still smiling, exhaling with relief.  Foggy can’t look.  He knows that look.  It’s the look of collusion.  Karen thinks that they are in the same boat with their knowledge about Matt.  He nudge his hand across the blanket to take hers and holds it as tightly as he can manage.  She’s going to forgive Matt so easily when the truth comes out; Foggy’s not sure he’s going to receive the same courtesy. 

            The door to the hospital room swings open, and Matt comes barrelling in ahead of the nurse who is supposed to be leading him.  His cane is touching the floor enough to suggest he’s using it, but he nearly gives himself away by marching directly towards Foggy’s hospital bed without stopping for directions.  Normally, he doesn’t do amateur hour when performing average sensory perception, but normally, he’s not so frazzled.  Matt’s flush with what looks to be a run across Hell’s Kitchen, and he’s having a harder time breathing than Foggy. 

            “Matt,” Foggy says to cover for him.  Karen doesn’t seem to have noticed all the mistakes, but he doesn’t want to take that risk after his fantastic job of lying to her earlier. 

            Matt doesn’t appear to care about pretenses.  He charges over to the bed and reaches for his friend’s hand, “Foggy, I am…I am so sorry.  Are you okay?”  
  
            He is a mess: hair all over the place, shirt buttoned incorrectly, coat open, two different scarves wrapped haphazardly around his neck and shoulders. 

            Matt certainly doesn’t.  He is a mess: hair all over the place, shirt buttoned incorrectly, coat open, two different scarves wrapped haphazardly around his neck.  Too much like a man who flew out of bed to answer a call about a sick friend.  He’s compensating.  Foggy knows exactly why, and in case he doesn’t, Matt opens with, “Foggy, I am…I am so sorry.”

            Karen offers up her seat.  Matt doesn’t take it.  He’s too busy searching out Foggy’s hand, “What happened?”

            “Whoa, Matt, slow down,” Karen’s picked up on his inability to breathe.  She puts his hand on Foggy’s.  “He’s here.  He’s okay.  They want to keep him overnight for observation.”

            “Foggy, I don’t know how I missed your call…I…” Matt has to stop to catch his breath.  He waves his hand as substitute for an explanation he physically can’t provide because air. 

            Foggy raises a hand to give Matt his oxygen mask.  Karen stops him, “No,” and then, to Matt;  “Did you run here?”  

            “I had a hard time…catching a cab…” Matt pats the back of Foggy’s hand reassuringly.  He hasn’t found another cab hailer; Foggy needn’t worry.  “So…yeah, I ran here.  Or at the very least walked with speed and purpose.”

            Karen shoots a glance between them, unable to figure out which of her friends takes greater risks with their lives.  Foggy wishes he could take credit.  He knows Matt didn’t have trouble getting through the neighbourhood.  Hell, Matt probably parkoured his way across the rooftops with the panache of a Cirque de Soleil production after a quick stop home to change out of his Daredevil duds.  Foggy, meanwhile, fought the twisted machinations of his own demonic subconscious.  He has spiders in his lungs.  He wins the Mortality Award for the night. 

            “I’m good,” Foggy assures Matt.  “You know what else is good?  Breathing.  Breathing’s good.” He proves his point by taking a long pull of oxygen, and his body rewards him for his kindness by giving him a coughing fit.  Undeterred, Foggy hacks his next couple of words, sounding like an angry cat being squeezed to death by a boa constrictor, “BREATHING IS AMAZING.” 

            The world reds out for several long, painful eternities of lung-ripping, chest-clenching action, during which Foggy gets to relive his painful strangulation by hallucinatory muppet one more time.  He swats at the ghostly felt hands constricting his neck as Karen and Matt fly into action around him.  When air is going into his lungs again instead of just out, Foggy opens his eyes to find himself damn near upright on the bed.  Matt’s arm supports his back, Karen’s got a small plastic basin in front of his mouth, and all of a sudden Foggy sews up his mouth tight. 

            “You’re supposed to spit it out,” Matt reminds him.

            Foggy is not going to do that.  Not when she’s right the hell in front of him. 

            Karen blushes wildly, “You did it a bunch of times while you were out.  I got really good at this.”

            “Ugh…” Foggy screws his eyes up tight and, as gracefully as possible, spits out the wad of crap recently dislodged from his lungs.  Karen pushes his oxygen mask back into place.  “A gentlemen doesn’t spit in front of a lady.”

            “I didn’t realize there were any gentlemen present,” Matt jokes, easing Foggy back onto his bed. 

            “Throw my sputum at him, Karen!” Foggy wheezes on his way down to the pillow.  “As my employee, you must abide!”

            “She’s my employee too,” Matt points out.   
  
            Karen sets the sputum-filled basin on his wheeling table next to her purse.  She doesn’t really want to be holding it anymore, “They didn’t teach us sputum-throwing in finishing school.”  
  
            “You went to the right finishing school,” Matt smiles.

            Foggy’s voice is a deflating balloon, but he continues speaking, “We need to institute some workplace training.”  
  
            Karen laughs, “In sputum-throwing?”  
  
            “In Matt…” words?  Where are you, words?  His brain’s gone and hidden them all over the place, in nooks and crannies, and they’re covered in a same slime as his lungs so they slip over Foggy’s tongue in a mess, “Matt…getting hit by…sputum-throwing…when he questions my gentlemanly-ness…you know what?” he gives up.  “I’m sick.  A muppet tried to kill me tonight.  Please, defend my honour, Karen.”

            Just so she’s clear: “By sputum-throwing?”  
  
            He wraps his index finger around her pinky finger and holds it shakily, “Help me, Karen-Wan Kenobi.  You’re my only hope.”

            Karen struggles not to laugh and fails.  She picks up Foggy’s hand and rubs it between her own.  “I’m so happy you’re okay,” she breathes.  “So happy you’re both okay.” 

            Matt tries to assuage her, “The walk really isn’t difficult for me.”  
  
            She shakes her head, “No, I know.  Just something Foggy said, that’s all.”  
  
            Foggy steps up to comfort her as best he can, “I said a lot of things, Karen.”  
  
            “Yeah, just…” she rubs his knuckles thoughtfully, weighing the pros and cons of speaking her thoughts, her theories, her doubts.  Of course she says something.  It isn’t in Karen’s nature to stay silent, even when she’s afraid of the consequences.  “When Foggy called, he said he was going looking for you in the river.  I was already worried about Foggy; I started worrying about you too.” 

            “I’m fine, Karen.”

            She smiles sadly, still cradling Foggy’s hand like a small animal in her arms.  “I guess he did mention looking for you with a muppet.  And shocking you back to life if you weren’t too dead at the time,” her attempts to make a joke of her worry seem so much sadder in contrast with her overwhelming concern. 

            Foggy so wants to tell her.  He’s not entirely sure how that will make her feel better, but he knows that lying will make him feel worse.  He doesn’t have the strength of his convictions when he can’t breathe.  Matt’s expression makes it hard to keep the secret.  He doesn’t look like he has much conviction either. 

            Matt repeats himself, compensating again for a performance he wants more than he feels, “I’m fine, Karen.”

            “Me too,” Foggy agrees.

            Karen’s smile is flat.  She lies too, “Okay.”

* * *

 

            The muppet’s back, but so is Foggy’s strength.  He rips the little felt arms off his neck, swats the phantom muppet body on his chest, and wrestles the puny hallucination all the way into a sitting position.

            “Whoa, Foggy, Foggy, Foggy…” Matt’s hands on his shoulders remind him that the muppet isn’t real.  The nasal cannula he’s fighting with is real, though, and apparently belongs on his face.  Matt takes it from his friend’s hands before Foggy can tear it to pieces.  “That’s helping.  Can you…?” he laughs lightly.  “I don’t want to poke you in the eye trying to put it back on.”  
  
            Foggy doesn’t really want to.  He feels a lot better than before.  One breath in, though, and he remembers how awesome air is and how crap his lungs are at absorbing it at the moment.  He raises the nasal cannula back to his face with shaking hands and spinning thoughts.  Then he lays back on the bed, savouring every single breath he gets.

            The hospital room is lighter.  Muted sunlight streams through the window.  A gray day in Hell’s Kitchen.  Karen’s gone home, so Matt monopolizes the chair.  He offers a small cup of water to Foggy, who takes a sip from the straw before lying back down. 

            Foggy’s throat feels up for talking again.  The pressure on his chest has loosened.  He wants to tell Matt how great it feels to wake up and feel a little more like himself.

            What comes out of his mouth is, “I think you should tell Karen.”  
  
            Matt laughs uneasily.  That was not the good morning he was expecting, “Welcome back, Foggy.”  
  
            “I meant to start that differently,” Foggy is about to apologize but…no, no, he is not going to apologize.  He’s going to try not to apologize.  Damn it, “I’m sorry.  But either you tell her or she is going to figure it out.  Not just because I call her with delusions about muppets either, and I’m sorry for that too.”  
  
            He thinks Matt’s about to yell at him, and Foggy admits that he would deserve it.  Karen’s been paranoid for a while but the phone call about the river really seems to have rattled her.  Foggy immediately runs as much damage control as his grated vocal chords will allow, “I was trying to call you last night, if that makes this just a little better.”

            Matt turns his head so Foggy can only see his profile.  It’s the angry stance, the I-just-want-some-distance look.  Foggy braces himself for whatever comes next.  Yelling, storming off: he can take it.  He’s helped blow his best friend’s biggest secret.  Matt deserves to have his yell.

            It’s the morning of surprise openers, apparently, because Matt says, “None of this would have happened if I had stayed at the apartment with you.”  
  
            Foggy tears his eyes from the ceiling to find Matt still turned away from him.  The angry expression is still there, but it’s not directed at him.  “What do you mean?” Foggy asks.  “I was the one who called Karen thinking you were in the river.”  
  
            “But I was the one who left you alone.”

            Matt’s devil voice is unmistakeable.  Subtle, true, none of that overblown crap from the new Batman movies, but Foggy can tell.  Matt speaks in a higher register.  The devil’s point of inflection all drop down towards hell. 

            “You were there?” Foggy tries to remember.  He knows Matt came by after work with dinner and stayed for most of primetime.  The rest of the evening melts away into a big pot of memory soup though.  Matt might have been there, but Foggy has an easier time recollecting the muppet than he does Matt.  “Were you there?”  
  
            Matt has gone stock still.  He speaks in his upper register, less devil but no less damned, “Your temperature was down.  I asked if you were okay, you said yes.  I told you…I told you to call me if you needed anything.”

            “I don’t remember any of that,” Foggy has trouble wrapping his head around it even.  Matt’s saying things, he understands them, but he can’t admit to them, doesn’t want them to be true.  “I don’t remember.”  
  
            “Foggy, I am-”

            “Don’t.  Please, don’t say anything,” Foggy can’t focus on Matt’s apology and his feelings at the same time.  His reaction is slow to surface, slower still as he struggles to breathe and think at the same time.  The pressure on his chest tightens up again.  He decides to start with the things he knows.  “I almost died last night.”

            “I know.  I’m-”

            Foggy shakes his head.  His throat’s full of crap again, but he doesn’t want to satisfy Matt’s guilt with helping when he coughs.  He hisses through the urge, a cat choking on a hairball, and it’s worse.  It’s so much worse.  He rolls away from Matt, curls in on himself, and coughs.

            He hears Matt getting up to help.  His hand goes in the air and waves for Matt to sit his ass back down in the chair.  He collects the lung-garbage at the front of his mouth and turns back over for the basin.  Matt has it in his hands; Foggy nabs it from him, spits, all but throws the basin back on the table.  He glares daggers at Matt, searching for all the things he needs to say.  The right reasons to be pissed off.

            Because he is pissed off.

            “I am not going to mention all the times I have come over to your house in the middle of the night to do things I am in no way qualified to do,” Foggy has to take several deep breaths before he can speak again.  Matt sits in silence, absorbing Foggy’s words like a sound lashing.  The way he just sits there and takes it changes Foggy’s mind though.  He wants this to hurt, “Screw it, I am.  You need something, I am _there_.”

            “I know.”

            He stumbles across the problem he’s having at long last in his heart, “I don’t even know if I’m allowed to be mad at you for this.  You left me to go off and save other people.”

            “You have every right to be angry, Foggy.  I am so-”

            “NO,” Foggy points a finger at Matt.  He ignores how fizzly his vision is getting and the pounding of his heart trying to burst out of his too-tight chest, “You left me, Matt, and I really could have used a friend last night.”

            “I know.”  
  
            “You were already at my apartment!  I was dying!”  
  
            “I thought you were okay.  You said you were okay.”  
  
            “I also said the satanic muppet I hallucinated was my spirit animal and that he and I should go looking for you at the bottom of the river!” Foggy starts to cough again, forces himself to laugh instead.  The sound is bitter, ragged, and wholly unpleasant.  Like running gravel through a blender.  “That might be the worst part, actually: I was dying last night, and I was worried that I might never see you again.  That you were already gone and…” his laughter starts to disintegrate into quiet tears.  Foggy can’t help himself.  Crying is easier that laughing.  Crying hurts less.  He rubs a hand against his face and knocks the nasal cannula out.  Air shoots into his eye.  Foggy throws it aside again.  Matt doesn’t try to pick it up.  He’s too busy crying too. 

              “I told you once,” Foggy says tearfully, “and I’m going to say it again, and this is the _last time_ I am telling you: all I ever need is my friend.”

            Matt grits his teeth, “Foggy…”  
  
            “NO,” he doesn’t want to hear it yet.  There’s still things he has to say.  “I get it: the city needs you.  I just need to know that sometimes, once in a while, when I am going out of my mind, I’ve got the devil at my side.  I am always going to have your back.  Tell me you are going to have mine.”

            Matt nods, “I have your back.  I swear, I’ve got your back.  Can I please tell you how sorry I am?”

            “Yes,” Foggy’s ready to hear it.  Also, the Catholic guilt seems to have reached a fever pitch.  Matt is trembling. 

            “Foggy, I am so, so sorry for leaving you alone last night.  I am so sorry that you almost died and that I wasn’t there.  It won’t happen again.  I promise, I have your back completely.  From now on.”

            Foggy shudders.  He thought that would make him feel better; it doesn’t.  Nothing does.  Not yelling at Matt, not preventing his apology, not hearing his apology.  “It never used to be this complicated,” he laments.  “I thought honesty made everything easier, but now there’s apologies and missteps, and not about small things.  About big things, huge things, life-threatening things.  Almost-dying kinds of things.  And saying something noble like ‘maybe that’s the whole point of living’ seems like a trite consolation prize.” 

            “People lie to avoid complicating things.”

            “So are you lying now?”  
  
            Matt sucks in a breath.  The tears are audible in his voice, “No, Foggy.  I wouldn’t lie about something like this.  I am so, so sorry.  I won’t ever let it happen again.  I don’t…I don’t want to lose you. 

             Foggy starts to cry too, “I don’t want to lose you either.”

            “I’m sorry,” it’s all Matt can say.     
  
            “Thank you,” Foggy chokes.  The crap in his lungs has returned with a vengeance.  He wipes at his face before giving into another coughing fit. 

            His insides try to join his outsides and the steady ache of his chest blazes into an inferno.  Foggy hunches his back and coughs, slinging lungfuls of air in only to force metric tonnes of crap out.  Matt holds the basin up in his general direction, and Foggy loads it up with his own body weight in chest sludge. 

            Then the cup of water comes back to him, and Foggy can’t figure out whether water or air tastes better. 

            Matt tests Foggy’s mood with a neutral statement, “You should probably put your cannula back in.”  
  
            “Right,” Foggy fumbles for it on the bed.  Matt’s hand comes to join his and finds the tube faster.  He hands it to Foggy, who puts it back on his face.  “Thank you.”

            Another question, still neutral, still cautious, “TV?”  
  
            “No, I’m probably going to get back to sleep,” Foggy settles in against his pillow.  Sleeping on his back isn’t his first instinct, but he’s tired enough to try it out.  Matt settles into the chair in silence.  He still looks like fresh hell from his blustery arrival last night. 

            Foggy sighs sympathetically.  Seems strange to make a big deal about things and then say this but he has to, “You know you don’t have to stay now.  Danger’s passed.  I think I’m actually just going to get some sleep.”

            “I’ll stay for a bit.”  
  
            “I don’t want you here out of guilt.”  
  
            “This isn’t guilt,” Foggy doesn’t get a chance to call bullshit, “This isn’t _entirely_ guilt.  You are right though.  I need to be better about having your back.”

            Foggy’s eyes start to close.  He lets them.  “I appreciate it,” he says drowsily. 

            “Besides,” Matt says, “someone needs to stay awake to fight the homicidal muppet if he comes back.”  
  
            The words drift lazily over his tongue.  Foggy’s slurring a bunch of them together and can’t help himself, “You can’t fight the homicidal muppet.  It’d be like fighting me.  That’s how hallucinations work.”

            “That’s not how hallucinations work.”  
            Foggy opens his eyes, gives Matt a stern look, “But…that’s what the muppet said…” and it made perfect sense last night when he was burning up with fever.  It just sounds dopey now that he says it aloud. 

            “I will stay here to help you ignore bad advice from homicidal muppets then,” Matt agrees. 

            “Thank you.”

            Foggy closes his eyes and tries to sleep.  He doesn’t succeed.  He spends a long while rolling his head over the pillow to give the illusion of resting on his side.  It fails miserably. 

            Meanwhile, Matt has inched his chair closer to the bed, and he’s fixed his gaze on Foggy’s chest attentively.   

            “How do my lungs sound?” Foggy asks, thinking that’s what Matt’s listening to.

            “You really want to know?”

            “That gross, huh?”

            “Like two dying cats.  Your right one’s worse than your left one, actually.  There’s way more mucous in there.”  
  
            “Ew.”  
   
           “Yeah.  One of the reasons I like heartbeats more than breathing.”

            Foggy understands.  He closes his eyes.  “How does my heart sound?”

            “Like you’re going to be fine, Foggy,” Matt replies softly.  “Are uh…are we okay?  Can we be okay?”

            The answer should have been difficult to give; it isn’t.  Foggy’s response is immediate: hurt but healing.  “Yeah.  Yeah, buddy, I think it will be.”

 

* * *

 

Happy reading!         

 


	13. ...Foggy Gets Sick (Redux)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's nice to have the devil on your side. In a creepy way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: the characters and concepts in this story are the property of Marvel and their related affiliates. This is an amateur writing effort meant for entertainment purposes only.
> 
> I meant to come back with a longer installment after my honeymoon, but after eight days away from my computer and none of them spent watching the show, getting back to writing was like riding a unicycle backwards. In Ancient Greek. While juggling. As a result, I stuck to something short – I received some comments asking for Matt to take care of Foggy. I hope this eases some of the feels from the end of the previous chapter. 
> 
> At one point in this fic, I have Foggy pointing to something and Matt responding. In the show, he is able to follow bigger movements, and I figured he would be pretty focused here. 
> 
> Readers, thank you so much for your kind wishes and support! I had a fantastic time traveling, and I’m so happy to be back online hanging out with all of you. I hope you enjoy this. Cheers!

* * *

 

…Foggy Gets Sick (Redux)

 

            It’s more night than morning and Foggy can’t speak, so he texts Matt on his way out of Emerg: 

            **My throat is strepped right the hell out.**

            (He hopes Matt’s SMS reader can pronounce the word ‘strepped’.)

            **Seriously, the doctor didn’t even bother to swab it.**

**Obviously, I’m dying.**

**You can have my records.  Give everything else to my mother.  Nothing I have is good enough for Karen.**

            **Sushi roll.  Deep fried shrimp.  Dead face.**

(The SMS reader has problems with emoticons, so he types those out too.)

            Foggy doesn’t receive a response and doesn’t plan to until well after dawn, when the devil goes back in the trunk and Matt gets some shut eye.  That leaves Foggy plenty of time to text Karen his formal resignation from the world of the living.  He then fails to flag down what looks to be the only cab in Hell’s Kitchen.  Throat dry and throbbing, prescriptions rattling at his side, and so over everything ever, Foggy decides that he is just going to hoof it all the way home.  Way better than standing all morose and pathetic outside of Metro-General.

            The walk doesn’t help though, it just hurts.  Foggy’s fever-baked joints and limp muscles, his relentlessly aching head.  His throat, already grated, gets shredded every time he inhales: through his nose, through his mouth, doesn’t matter.  Every breath is corrosive to the point where he almost marches back to the hospital and demands some oxygen.  When he turns, though, there’s a pair following behind him: burly guys that look to have appeared out of nowhere.  Foggy turns back towards home, swallowing what feels like acid to hide his rising fear, and continues walking.

            He’s not scared.  He can’t be scared: this is his neighbourhood.  He probably knows these guys, went to school with them or their siblings, may get hired to defend one or both of them for a petty legal something-or-other.  Foggy casts a glance over his shoulder to confirm.  They’ve gotten closer.  He huffs, wincing from pain, and picks up his pace. 

            They pick up their pace too.

            Foggy stops dead in his tracks, not in the mood.  He rips his flimsy wallet out of his pocket.  Makes a fist around his prescriptions – frigging antibiotics and an analgesic spray – then whips around to face them.  Foggy can’t speak louder than a raspy whisper, “You want some of this?”

            Evidently they don’t, because they’re gone.  The sidewalk’s empty all the way back to Metro-General.  Foggy looks around, expecting them to have crossed the street, but aside for a few cars and some people waiting for the bus, Foggy’s alone.  Even the flurry of shadows he thinks he sees in the alleyway turns out to be just a trick of his vision.

            That’s when he thinks they might have gotten the slip on him and rounded behind his back.  Foggy whips around.  He sees a few others wandering in the distance.  Not a one of them look like his would-be pursuers.   

            He puts his wallet back in his pocket, hugs his prescriptions to his chest, and rasps, “I guess not...”  He hazards one last glance at the alley to check that the movement was just a trick of the streetlight before continuing towards home. 

            There’s a cab waiting at the street corner.  Foggy raises an arm only to realize he doesn’t have to: the driver’s waiting.  He marches up to the window, typing out his address on his phone to keep from having to speak.  The driver beats him to the punch, “Hey – you Franklin Nelson?  Guy who can’t talk?”

            Foggy puts his phone down.  He stares at the driver, wondering if this driver’s looking for a grudge match over something that happened years ago or if he’s pissed off to not have received legal help from Nelson and Murdock.  Neither of those scenarios seem true: Foggy has never seen this guy before in his life. 

            The driver helps him out, “A friend of yours called it into dispatch.  I’ve got your address and everything.”  
  
            “What friend?” Foggy forces himself to ask.  First mystery pursuers disappear mysteriously, and now a cab shows up with his address looking to give him a lift.  He’s probably getting disappeared and murdered tonight, and he doesn’t even know why.

            “Your friend,” the driver answers.  “You want a ride or not?”

            Foggy nods and hops in the back.  He pulls out his phone to check for messages: neither Karen nor Matt has texted him back.  Neither probably knows he’s out this late, and it’s not like he has other people in the city to call cabs on his behalf.  He puts his phone away, watching the streets as they pass.  The driver pulls him up to his building a few minutes later.  Foggy tips as well as he can, because he still feels like this could be the preamble to his murder.

            He doesn’t feel safe until he’s up the stairs outside his apartment.  His body aches all over.  The fever’s getting higher, throat’s getting smaller, and he is looking forward to collapsing for the next century until this bug runs its course. 

            His phone buzzes the second he gets his door open.  It’s Matt: **Check your bedroom window**. 

            Foggy texts him back on his way down the hall: **That is officially the creepiest text you’ve ever sent me**.

            He drops his coat, scarf and gloves en route, kicking off his pants when he gets to the bedroom.  He doesn’t want to turn on the lights with his headache, so Foggy is left squinting out the window in search of Matt’s surprise.  He’s a little worried that his two followers from earlier will be hanging from the roof as a get-well-soon present from hell.

            Only the nighttime sky greets him, until he ventures a look down.  There, in his empty window box, is a white grocery bag.  The orange lids of several sports drinks greet him. 

            Foggy pries open the window and pulls the bag in.  There’s more than just electrolyte-rich drinks.  Matt picked up some strep-friendly foods too and threw them in the bag for good measure.  He pulls out his phone and texts: **Show off.**

            Matt takes very little time to respond:   **If I really wanted to show off, I would have broken into your apartment.**

            Foggy wants to be able to say how creepy that is, but he has to text it instead.  All this sentiment – because weird and creepy as tonight has been, this is sentiment for Matt - is closing up Foggy’s throat more than his strep throat ever could.  He also has to ask: **Are you on the roof?**

            Matt:  **Yes.**  

Foggy: **Are you in costume?**

            Matt:  **Not tonight**.

            Foggy doesn’t want to ask why in text message: **What are you still doing on the roof then?  These are my dying moments.  Come give me my last rites.**

He gets a pair of pyjama pants on just in time for Matt to knock on the door.  Opening it, Foggy’s surprised to see College-era Matt standing there, decked out in black sweats and runners, cane clasped in his hands, hair slightly askew, and a crooked grin on his face.  His scarf – also black – seems to have doubled as a mask if the knot in it is any indication. 

            “Do Anglicans have last rites?” Matt asks as he steps into Foggy’s apartment. 

            Foggy shakes his head.  He has no idea, and really, it doesn’t matter.  He whistles and puffs his way through, “I just want to cover all my bases before I meet my maker.”

            Matt kicks off his shoes and the two make their way instinctively to the couch.  Foggy drops like a rock just in time to remember all his sick-stuff is in the bedroom.  Meds, drinks, throat spray – all of it.  So far away.  Too far away.  He moans as he tries to lift himself back up.  Matt’s hand on his shoulder stops him, “I got it, Foggy.”

            He doesn’t want to know how Matt did that.  Actually, he does, but the words are too sharp for his throat.  They scrape against his already raw insides, and Foggy decides to let them go.  For now.  He’ll have to make a list of all the stuff he wants to say later. 

            For the time being, Foggy occupies himself with watching Matt navigate through the apartment.  His cane is by the couch, and he does take his time passing through doorways, but the whole process is effortless.  Matt knows the space, can anticipate obstacles.  Times like this, Foggy wonders how he went so long without realizing Matt’s super-sensory perception.

            “Uh…what am I looking for?” Matt asks from the bedroom.

            Foggy nods: that’s how he didn’t know.  There’s only so much heightened hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching can do for a person’s perception.  He opens his mouth to speak and can’t make much more than a scratchy exhale.  Matt hears that, of all things, “Oh, right.  Sorry, I forgot.  Knock if everything’s on the bed?”

            One knock.  Matt’s hands shuffle through the covers, “Knock if it’s two bags?”

            Another knock.  Matt emerges, victorious, and sets his payload on the coffee table.  Foggy tears into the paper bag from the pharmacy and douses his throat in sugary spray.  The flavour is enough to make him vomit, but the relief quickly overpowers his nausea.  He sighs and mutters, “Thank you.”  He still sounds choked, but the pain is subsiding. 

            Matt stands for several moments, listening or sensing or whatever he does, before speaking again, “Uh…do you need…have you taken…?”  He starts again, “Your temperature is really high.”  
  
            Foggy is too exhausted to call Matt out for reading him.  He hisses, “No,” points to the duffel bag on the chair, and hopes that translates everything he needs to say.  Matt, bless him, is off and walking.  He pats his way along the zippers, finds the one that rattles, and draws out a couple of bottles for Foggy’s perusal.  He also finds one of the bottles of water and delivers all of it to Foggy.

            “Can I do anything else?”  
  
            Foggy picks through the pills till he finds Tylenol, “Sit.  I’m good.”

            Matt sits: right on the edge of the couch, ready to spring into action if Foggy should ask.  “For real?” Foggy pops two Tylenol and then settles back on the couch.  “At ease, soldier.”

            “Sorry,” Matt laughs.  He’s simultaneously good-natured and self-conscious as he leans back into a sitting position.  “It’s been a strange night.”  
  
            “Good night?”  
  
            “Yeah,” he’s sorry to admit that, but it’s true no matter what how much guilt he’s radiating.  “Different good.  I’m glad you’re alright.”

            “How…” the tops of the h and the roundedness of the word cuts into Foggy’s throat.  He can’t remember how to swallow.  Then, when he finally does, there’s just more pain.  “How did you know I was in Emerg?”  
  
            “Lucky guess…?” Matt offers lamely.  Foggy can’t glare very well, but he does his best don’t-screw-with-me stare that registers in Matt’s sensory perception.  “I knew you were getting sick, Foggy.  I figured it was only a matter of time before you went to see a doctor.  I thought…I hoped you’d call before you went to Emerg, but I understand why you didn’t.”  
  
            Foggy considers this – tonight, not how Matt knew he was getting sick because _weird_ \- and can only come up with one conclusion, “You staked out Metro-General?”

            “I staked out your apartment.”  
  
            It’s a weird feeling, one that’s caught between Matt Murdock and the Daredevil: the former looking to take care of his best friend and the latter stalking him across the neighbourhood.  Foggy flushes warm and cold, comfortable and unsettled, endeared and terrified.  “So…those guys who were following me?”  
  
            “I let them know you weren’t worth robbing,” Matt makes it sound like he just had a civil conversation with them until he adds, “I let them know no one else was worth robbing either.”  
  
            Foggy can only imagine what that conversation looks like for the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen.  “Thank you, I think.”  
  
            Matt doesn’t say anything to clear up the situation.  He’s having about as much trouble as Foggy negotiating an appropriate response for his identities at the moment.  Foggy is stuck on variations of the word creepy.  Stalking?  Creepy.  Beating up bad guys?  Noble-creepy.  Suggesting a break-in to deliver a care package to a friend?  Nice-creepy. 

            Foggy uses the last of his voice to broach the biggest gesture of all, “…so you weren’t just out Daredevil-ling tonight?”

            “I wouldn’t say that,” Matt replies.  “I just made sure the devil had your back.”  
  
            “Sweet-creepy…”  
  
            Not even Matt’s supersonic hearing makes that one out, or maybe he’s just not focusing.  “What?”  
  
            “Nothing,” Foggy lifts his hand and pats Matt on the shoulder.  “Thank you for looking out for me.”  
  
            “It’s the least I can do.”

            Foggy doesn’t point out that this isn’t the least Matt can do.  He doesn’t want to tip the scales of their dichotomous night towards negativity.  Instead, he focuses on the positives: the fact that Matt didn’t let him get jumped, that he was there at the Emergency room even if he wasn’t sitting next to Foggy, that he’s here during regularly scheduled Daredevil hours. 

            (Though they are going to have to talk about the stalking, even if Foggy’s glad not to have been jumped tonight.  The sneaking stuff into his window box thing is cool though.  That’s the sort of ninja shenanigans he wishes they could have gotten up to in college.)

            “You don’t have to stay,” Foggy says with a sigh.  He’s such a hypocrite, raging against Matt one minute for not standing by him and then dismissing him the next.

            If Matt notices, he doesn’t say anything.  “You’d stay with me,” is all he says. 

            “Yeah, but I’m not the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen.”  
  
            “No,” Matt agrees, “but I wouldn’t be either if you didn’t stay with me.”

            “Don’t do this because you owe me,” Foggy insists.  He can’t bear the thought of being sick and being owed.  “I mean, you do owe me…”

            Matt laughs, “I’m here because I want to be here.”

            He doesn’t believe that.  The muscles around his jaw have gone taut from conflict, and Foggy knows there’s something out there in the night that only Matt can hear.  “Look, if there’s people who need you more than me…”  
  
            “The city can save itself for one night,” Matt insists, more for his benefit than for Foggy’s. 

            “One night…” Foggy wheezes, half-joking, “I best be getting better then.”

            Another laugh.  Matt’s still able to figure out when he’s being played with, “Yeah, get on that, Foggy.  Hurry up and get to bed.  I’ll be here on the couch.  You’ve got bedding in that bag of yours, right?”

            Foggy nods and that’s the extent of his movement for a long while.   He doesn’t want to move, not until the word bed sinks through his foggy thoughts sounding so damn appealing that Foggy finds the strength to stand.  He carries a water in one hand, a sports drink in the other, and staggers, slouched almost in half, to the bedroom.  He doesn’t stop until his legs hit the mattress.  He’s about to topple over when a thought occurs to him, a very important thought, and he weaves his way dazedly back to the doorway. 

            “…breakfast?”

            There’s more to that sentence that doesn’t make it out of his throat alive.  Bless him, Matt understands, “Yeah, I’ll cook breakfast.”

            Foggy gives him a thumbs up and trudges to bed.  From the living room, he can hear Matt poking at his burner phone.  Quietly, in his best devil’s voice, Matt tells the person on the other line about a robbery in progress.  Tells them to send Mahoney if he’s on duty. 

            It’s nice to have the devil on your side.  In a creepy way.

 

 

* * *

 

Happy reading!      

           


	14. ...of Hospitals (Pt. 1)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “There’s this…pain in my abdomen,” Matt points to the area just below his belly button. “It’s excruciating.”
> 
> "Appendix,” Foggy guesses, and Matt gives a slight nod, encouraging this weird game of charades they’ve got going on. “Appendicitis. You have appendicitis. You need an appendectomy. Why aren’t you at the hospital?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: the characters and concepts in this story are the property of Marvel and their related affiliates. This is an amateur writing effort meant for entertainment purposes only.
> 
> I was having a lot of trouble continuing this for some reason! Maybe it was all the whump in The Devil’s Work or the worry that I was becoming repetitive or the increasing lengthiness of the installments, so I had to take another quick break from prompts (don’t worry: Foggy’s losing his sight soon!). I went to my h/c bingo card, saw ‘surgery’, and then this started percolating in my brain space. Patching Matt up on his home turf is one thing; the hospital is quite another. 
> 
> Readers, it’s such a pleasure to hear from you. I hope you’re all doing well, and that you enjoy the set-up for this short story arc. Cheers!

* * *

 

…of Hospitals (Pt. 1)

 

            Thirty-two seconds.  Approximately.  That’s how long Foggy is out of the room before alarms start going off. 

            Nurses swarm, anticipating a crash.  Foggy is hot on their heels, terrified of the same thing: Matt’s dead, and instead of sitting by him in his last moments, Foggy went on the hunt for coffee. 

            He battles his way through the gaggle of hospital personnel.  The discarded pulse ox and electrodes sit on the rumpled blankets, causing the monitor to scream about a flatline.  Matt’s IV tube swings back and forth from its pole, freshly yanked from his arm.  A sharp, wintry breeze cuts through the tension of the hospital room, and the nurses rush over to check the open window.

            At first, Foggy’s relieved that the bed is simply empty.  Then he’s back to panicked because the bed is empty.  Matt’s gone – _literally_ gone – a fact that’s almost scarier than him being dead because he is an idiot who just had surgery and climbed out a second floor window.  The nurses shake their heads and mutter oaths because he can’t be seen in the parking lot.  Foggy doesn’t wait around for them to say more.  He is on his phone marching for the stairs.

* * *

            Foggy is not supposed to be wandering around Metro General looking for an absconded vigilante.  For the first time in a long time, Foggy is supposed to be at home, in bed, sleeping.  His alarm clock is supposed to go off at a normal time.  He is supposed to go to work well-rested and alert for a long, hard day of practicing law, a job he is supposed to do. 

            He is supposed to do a lot of things.  None of it happens.

            Foggy’s woken up by a soft but persistent knock at his front door, the sort of knock that should tip him off to the complete travesty his night is about to become.  It’s a Matt Murdock special, a small, polite tap that signals what the lad perceives to be a grand request but is actually a basic human kindness.  Or at least it would be basic if it wasn’t requested in the middle of the night.

            Matt’s not wearing his costume.  Foggy rubs his eyes just to be sure, the lights from the hallway are blinding to him, but he’s a little taken aback to find it’s true.  Matt is dressed hurriedly in gray sweats, runners, and his wool jacket.  No scarf.  His sunglasses and nine o’clock shadow cut hard lines across his pale, perspiring face.  The cane rattles in his hands.

            Fear is such an odd look on Matt.  He doesn’t wear it well.  Foggy, on the other hand, gets along real well with fear.  He drinks in Matt’s fright and makes it his own, hoping that’ll ease some of the tension.  It doesn’t. 

            “What’s wrong?” Foggy begs.  “Are you sick?  Are you hurt?”  
  
            Matt’s grip on his cane tightens, “I think I’m sick.”  
  
            Not the answer he’s expecting.  Matt is never that forward.  Foggy has to ask, “Why?”

            “There’s this…pain in my abdomen,” Matt points to the area just below his belly button.  “It’s excruciating.”

            Foggy nods dumbly, seeing but not comprehending.  His brain is still waking up.  The area Matt’s gesturing at is important.  There’s an organ that can get infected.  Little French Ginger girl had it removed in a children’s book one time.  “Appendix,” Foggy guesses, and Matt gives a slight nod, encouraging this weird game of charades they’ve got going on.  “Appendicitis.  You have appendicitis.  You need an appendectomy.  Why aren’t you at the hospital?” 

            Matt nods vigorously.  Foggy raises his hands in a cheer for having won, and then the gravity of the situation dawns on him.  He lowers his arms and asks very seriously, “Why aren’t you at the hospital?”

            The game ends with a whimper: Matt’s whimper.  Then he starts to tear up.  He lets out a tiny, squeaky cry , the tip of a bigger sob he’s keeping locked in his throat, and presses a hand defensively against his face.  He opens his mouth to explain the foolish logic that brought him here, but he can’t bring himself to tell.  The words he’s looking for are a whole new level of embarrassing. 

            “Ah, geez, Matt,” the sound of his name makes Matt shudder.  A few tears spill out from under his glasses.  he covers them up with his palm.  Foggy sighs, collecting his coat and shoes.  His phone is still in the bedroom; he can get it before they go.  “I would have met you at the hospital.”

            “I really don’t…” he swallows the weepy sounds he’s making.  “I really don’t want to go.”

            “Let’s not go then!” Foggy beams sarcastically.  “I’ve got sharp knives and YouTube.  I’ll just give you an appendectomy right here on my kitchen floor serial killer style.” 

            Matt, unbelievably, looks like he’s giving Foggy’s offer real consideration.  Foggy clarifies, “Let’s get you to the hospital.” 

            “F-f-foggy…” his bottom lip is vibrating more than his hands.

            Foggy covers his eyes with his hand, “Nope.  Your ducky good looks at not going to fool me into a DIY -ectomy.”  He backs away into his apartment, heading for his phone.  He can hear Matt sniffling in the hall.  “You are going to the hospital where a competent, well-trained professional is going to remove your festering, rotting appendix.”

            The thought of surgery silences Matt.  Foggy grabs his phone and quickly head back into the hallway to make sure he hasn’t disappeared.  Matt’s still standing where he was though, too tired and sick to run. 

            At that, Foggy softens his tone, because Matt must really be sick – and/or must really know how dangerous this is – if he’s staying put.  “I’m going to be there with you the whole time, Matt.”

            Matt exhales wetly in what would otherwise be a laugh, “Do you think there’s a chance they’ll do the operation without anesthesia?”  
  
            “You know, buddy,” Foggy locks his apartment door behind him and gets 9-1-1 punched in on his cell, “if you ask ‘em real nicely, I bet they would.  Doctors are sadistic bastards.”  
  
            The line doesn’t hit comedy gold.  Instead, Matt looks even more likely to let his appendix rupture and kill him in protest.  Foggy groans, “I’m kidding!  They’re not going to do it without anesthetic!”

            “I don’t know what’d be worse for me,” Matt admits. 

            “Staying here to die: that would be worse,” Foggy loops an arm with Matt’s and ushers him towards the stairs.

* * *

            Thirty-odd seconds.  Barely enough time for Matt to wake up from all the crap they put him on, but long enough that he can successfully escape out a window.  Foggy is attaching a bell to him or something: a tracking device, maybe, or a shock collar.  He swipes through his contacts to find Claire’s number on his phone.

            “Sir, you’re not allowed to use your cell phone in here!” a nurse calls after him.

            Foggy ducks out of sight, so not having time for this crap.  The hospital stairwell provides excellent cover but his reception fizzles slightly.  Claire answers on the third ring.  He caught her on a break.  Maybe the universe is on his side.

            “I was right about using restraints, wasn’t I?” she asks. 

             “You were right. I was wrong,” the restraints might have freaked Matt out, but at least he would still be in bed.  “He climbed out the window about fifteen seconds ago.  Can you help me find him?”  
  
            She offers what little she can, “I can put the call into security if that hasn’t been done already.”

            Foggy wishes he could appreciate the help, but he knows better.  Scared Matt + Hospital Security = Disaster.  “Wonderful,” Foggy says, “I will follow the trail of assaulted security guards to my frightened, doped-up bestie.”

            “There are a lot of other sick people in Hell’s Kitchen tonight,” she replies, “And you were the one who said no restraints.”

            “His nurse was the one who assured me that he was out till morning!” Foggy takes a calming breath.  It’s not Claire who’s at fault here.  It’s not even Matt’s nurse who’s to blame.  “Look, he hates hospitals,” Claire scoffs at the understatement; Foggy does too, because Lord, doesn’t he know it, “He was already freaking out when I brought him here, and if security finds him, they’ll sedate him, and he’ll freak more.”  
  
            Claire sighs.  Her tone is sadly resigned, “Then I suggest you find him first if he’s still in the hospital.  Which he might not be.  The last time he escaped, he went to your place.”  
  
            “I’ll get Karen on it.”

            “I can try to keep you posted about security, but I make no promises.”   
  
            “Thanks,” Foggy disconnects.  He starts heading down the stairs, punching at his contacts list until he finds Karen’s number.

            She doesn’t answer until the second time he calls.  Her voice is groggy with sleep, “Foggy?  What is it?”

            “Matt’s escaped from the hospital.”

            He really should have provided a lead-in like, “The surgery went well, and there were no complications,” but that’s kind of implied by Matt escaping. Besides, Karen’s more wide awake because of his blunt opener, “Oh, my gosh.  Is he okay?”   

            Foggy provides some damage control, “He’s fine,” well, he was fine.  When he was resting comfortably.  Before he jumped out a window.  Sweet Karen probably doesn’t need to know all that.  Foggy sticks to the basics, “But he’s not in his bed, and the last time that happened, he ended up at my place for a flu-season slumber party.  Would you mind staking it out?”  He technically gave her the spare key for other reasons, mostly ones related to his heart and the way it still skips a beat in her presence, but he can make an exception just this once for something Matt-centric. 

            “I’ll get a cab and take a drive around the neighbourhood,” Karen’s already up and moving.  “He can’t have gotten far.”

            Foggy doesn’t want to give too much away, but he wants her to be as prepared as possible, “Make sure to really check the alleyways.  He’s on a lot of meds, and you know how he goes on about having mad ninja skills when he’s messed up.  He might actually try some parkour.”

            “Got it.”  
  
            “We will reimburse you for the cab fare,” they almost have the kind of money to do that now. 

            “Don’t worry about it, Foggy.”

            “Thank you, thank you so much, Karen.  Call me if you find him.  I’m going to try and catch him before hospital security does.” 

            “Good luck,” she bids him. 

            He means to say more but hangs up before he can.  The stairwell feels like its spinning.  Foggy has to stop before he falls.  He is not ready for tonight, not after the week they’ve been having.  Between late nights at the office and later nights at Matt’s apartment, Foggy is ready to curl up in the corner and sleep.  Let hospital security or the NYPD find Matt, teach him a valuable lesson about the healthcare system and how, like the mounties, the hospitals always get their man.  Tie him to the bed.  Medicate him into a coma.  Foggy doesn’t care. 

            Immediately, he’s guilty.  Friends don’t let friends get caught by hospital security or the NYPD, especially not friends who have irrational fears of hospitals.  They keep looking until their friends are safe and sound.  And then they surgically implant a GPS tracking device at the base of their friend’s spinal column, so their friend can never go missing again.

            “Okay,” Foggy folds his arms and prepares for a good think, “Where are you, Matt?”

           

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Foggy's mentioning to Karen that Matt talks about parkour and ninja skills is a reference to another fic I wrote called Calamity Physics, wherein Matt, high on painkillers, tells Karen about his abilities and almost spills the beans about his secret identity. By the end of that fic, she's convinced he's raving from the drugs, a fact Foggy uses here to his advantage. 
> 
> Happy reading!


	15. ...of Hospitals (Pt. 2)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Okay, I’m Matt,” Foggy has to talk his way into this. “I’m freaked out, but I don’t want people to know I’m freaked out, so I’m acting as freaked out as possible.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: the characters and concepts in this story are the property of Marvel and their related affiliates. This is an amateur writing effort meant for entertainment purposes only.
> 
> There’s a moment in this chapter where Foggy’s joke does not go over well with Matt. I tried to convey his regret, but I do hope that the context doesn’t make him look like a monster. He is going to make nice soon, promise!
> 
> Readers, I want to thank you for your patience. This chapter took me longer than anticipated to post, and it ended up being (surprise, surprise) a lot longer to boot. As a result, this is going to be a three-parter. 
> 
> I am utterly grateful for the support, and I do hope you’re all doing well!

* * *

...of Hospitals (Pt. 2)

            Foggy’s footsteps are heavy as he trundles down the stairs.  The echoes drown out most of the sounds from the hospital, not to mention his fearful heartbeat.  Once on the first floor, he finds his exit.  Frost collects around the edges of the metal door.  He reaches for the handle, tugs it open, and then lets it close immediately after without bothering to take a step outside.  It is freezing.  His fingertips throb from the chill.  The cold needles through his winter jacket into his skin.  “Jesus, Matt,” he curses, “What the hell are you thinking?”  A hospital gown in this weather is going to result in one frozen devil.

            He buries his hands in his coat, holds the thought of his hypothermic friend close, and dives into the night.  The cold snaps at his cheeks and chaps his lips almost immediately.  Foggy forces himself towards the rows of cars, but there’s nothing out here.  Nobody is dumb enough to go searching through this weather.  Security is still probably biding their time inside.  All the more reason, Foggy supposes, to soldier on.  He can’t leave Matt out here alone.  Thirty seconds on his own in a hospital room prompted him to escape.  Minutes more in this weather and he’ll be back in surgery losing body parts he’ll actually miss.

            “Matt?!” he calls.  “Come on, man, I know you can hear me.  If you’re focusing.”  Which Matt may not be.  His senses have trouble recalibrating when he’s tired, sick, or hurt. 

            Foggy cups his hands around his mouth and exhales to warm them.  He takes several more steps to stand below the window of Matt’s hospital room.  “Okay, I’m Matt,” he has to talk his way into this.  “I’m freaked out, but I don’t want people to know I’m freaked out, so I’m acting as freaked out as possible.”  Typical.  “I climb out the hospital window and into the parking lot because I’m an idiot.”  Matt wouldn’t say that.  Foggy rethinks his language.  “Because I must protect the city.  I will not be seen as weak!  Fuck, it’s cold!”

            He stands shivering at the start of Matt’s journey, distracting himself with plotting Matt’s route down the wall of the building.  First, there’s the sheer drop onto the pavement.  Metro-General is an unforgiving building to try and scale: no handholds or footholds.  So Matt jumped out, picked himself up off the pavement, and ran off into the night.  In the freezing cold.  Wearing only a hospital gown.

            Two security guards come round from the other side of the building.  Their flashlight beams cut through the parked cars, revealing no one, least of all a dishevelled blind man with two broken legs and frostbite.  At first, Foggy isn’t sure why he doesn’t follow them, and why the more he thinks about doing so, the less he wants to.  In fact, his feet are starting to move back towards the stairway door.    

             “It’s too cold,” Foggy mumbles to himself.  “It’s too cold and there’s no way to climb down.”  He can’t get inside fast enough.  Matt leaps without looking sometimes.  He makes bad decisions when he gets emotional, but he isn’t stupid.  He didn’t go outside.  He got to the window and even in his state knew better than to climb out.

            Which means he’s still in the hospital somewhere.         

* * *

 

            Foggy looks forward to having motivations beyond guilt and anxiety.  This whole night is a big blur of pity and panic, from rushing back into Metro-General after his brief sojourn outside to the laps he made around Matt’s bed in pre-op. 

            “Stop looking at me like that, man,” Foggy has been a whole new breed of anxious since they got off the ambulance, and he isn’t even the one going in for the operation. 

            Matt doesn’t answer at first, but the pain ratchets itself up inside his abdominals and the banter becomes a welcome distraction, “Like what?”

            Foggy sighs, “You look like a kicked puppy.”  
  
            “I don’t know what a kicked puppy looks like.”  
  
            “It looks like you, right now,” Matt’s about to mention that he doesn’t know what he looks like either.  Foggy stops that comment in its tracks.  “Big brown eyes, sad frowny face, all hunched over.”  He must feel as bad as he looks since Matt starts to curl up even more.  The hospital gown makes him look smaller and wounded-er than he already is.  Foggy’s voice softens, “This is all going to be over soon.”  
  
            Matt groans loudly, plunging his hands against the flimsy mattress of the gurney.  The tendons in his arms pull tightly under his skin.  Foggy aims his worry-walk towards Matt only to have his friend wave him aside with one arm and a weak, “It’s okay.  I’m okay.”

            Foggy doesn’t believe him and hopes his heartbeat communicates that.  “Aside for your pigheadedness, why did you turn down painkillers?”  
  
            “I need another reason besides pigheadedness?”   

            The threat dies in Foggy’s throat.  When he has to precede comments with, “If your appendix wasn’t bursting right now,” Foggy figures there’s no point in saying them aloud.  "You should be lying down,” he says instead.

            “Doesn’t help,” Matt hisses.  His eyes screw up tight on his face and he tries to make a fist out of meat of his thigh.  Still he keeps a hand up to ward off Foggy.  “If anything, it makes it worse.”  
  
            “And if only we lived in the first world and had access to pharmaceuticals that provided pain relief,” Foggy snaps his fingers to drive home an unspoken aw, shucks.  Then he raises a finger in revelation, “Wait a minute…WE DO!  Imagine that!”

            “They’re going to give me something to take the edge off before surgery,” both his hands tremble at the thought.  Matt has to lower them onto the bed to hide.  He hunches over, so embarrassed that he nearly folds himself in half to hide. 

            Foggy gets as close as he can without Matt’s arm holding him away, “What are you so scared of, Matt?  Are you worried about the operation?”  
  
            “No.”

            “Being sick?”  
  
            Hesitation.  Obviously, being sick makes him a little scared.  Still, Matt lies, “No.”

            “Being alone?” Foggy chimes in before Matt can answer.  “Because I’m not going anywhere.  I will come into the OR with you if that’ll help.  I’m getting pretty good at sutures.  They might let me close you up.”  
  
            Matt gives a tiny laugh.  Foggy’s sutures have not improved that much.  The thought of them is entertaining enough to loosen Matt’s posture, “It’s not that, Foggy.”  
  
            “I have run out of things you could be afraid of.  Help me out.”  
  
            “It’s hard to describe,” but more than that, Matt doesn’t want to say it out loud.  Foggy can tell from the way he sits, head slightly cocked away from the conversation.  Whatever he wants to say sounds stupid, whiny.  Matt settles on what Foggy identifies as an understatement, “Medication makes it difficult for me to focus.”  
  
            Foggy thinks he understands, “You said you had to focus on letting things in.”

            “Yeah, but when I’m…” he waves a hand around in circles.  “Messed up?” Foggy supplies.  It’ll do, because Matt continues speaking, “I let everything in.  Everything: sounds, tastes, textures, smells.  I can’t get a read on anything.  It’s so…loud.” 

            Another understatement, no doubt.  The last time Foggy saw Matt on painkillers, Matt could hear nurses’ conversations from the floor below.  Hard to believe a place that sounds so quiet to Foggy can be so overwhelming for Matt. 

            Foggy reaches out and holds Matt’s trembling shoulder in his hand.  Matt’s eyes flutter open like he’s just returning to the room. “I got you, Matt,” Foggy assures him.  Matt so wants to believe he'll be okay, but the way he closes his eyes again in defeat exacerbates his kicked puppy posture. Foggy can't look, "You look like the dying little robot in  _WALL-E_."

            "I don't know what that looks like either."

            Foggy is about to describe Matt's appearance again, but the door to the room opens. Claire enters slowly. Usually, her presence is enough to put Matt at ease, but he stiffens the closer she gets. Of course: pre-op patients usually get dosed with something before they go to the OR. Foggy rubs Matt's shoulder blade, urging him to, "Relax."

            “I can’t do this…” Matt whispers.  He swats at his cheeks and pulls away from Foggy.  “I can’t.”

            Claire comes to stand by the bed, “The sooner we get you to the OR, the sooner you can go home.”

            Matt shakes his head, shifting away from her on the gurney.  He has to hit the wall before he stops, “No, no.  I choose death.  Death sounds good.  I want an AMA.  I’d rather…I’d rather die at home.”

            “You’re strung out on pain and a fever,” Claire replies.  “Legally, I can’t give you an AMA even if I wanted to.”

            He tosses his head towards Foggy, “Thank goodness I brought a lawyer.”

            “Are you prepared to pay my going rate?” Foggy demands. 

            “I thought you’d give me the Best Friend Discount.”

            “I did, but it doesn’t even make a dent in my standard You’re Being Ridiculous costs.”

            He’s gone too far, and as usual, Foggy doesn’t realize it until after the damage has already been done.  He thought Matt was joking.  Instead, Matt turns until his face is pointing at the wall, a wasted effort to hide.  Pain undoes him.  His tears might not be visible, but the way his face quivers and breaks is perfectly obvious when it’s paired with the small, wounded sounds he makes.

            Clearly, Claire has never seen this side of Matt before.  She looks uncertain as to how to proceed.  Foggy takes the lead.  He can’t believe he let his mouth run off like that, “Matt, I’m sorry.  I didn’t mean…”

            “No, you’re right.  I am being ridiculous.”

            “You’re scared,” Foggy shrugs.  He is such an ass.  “It’s okay to be scared.”

            Speaking the truth aloud only gives it more power.  Matt crushes the flimsy mattress in his fists, “Let’s get this over with.”  
  
            Foggy plans a better apology for later.  At the moment, he has more important things to say, “I’m going to be with you the whole time.  And I’ll be there when you wake up.”

            Matt keeps his lips pursed against further emotion.  He nods shakily.

            “I’ve got you, Matt.” 

            Another nod, shakier than the first.  Matt shuffles his body around and lifts his bare legs up onto the gurney.  The tremors are harder to see when he’s horizontal, either that or he’s hiding them better.  Claire helps, no doubt, or maybe she’s the reason Matt is working so hard at hiding his feelings. 

            She gathers his IV tube, searching for the port as she digs through her pockets for a syringe.  She stops just before she administers the injection.  “You really don’t have to worry.  They do this kind of procedure all the time.”

            “Yeah, yeah, I know, I’m being ridiculous,” Matt directs his comment to the ceiling instead of Claire, an evasive maneuver if Foggy ever saw one.  “You going to inject that?”

            She takes a deep, calming breath.  Foggy wants to agree with her out loud – Matt can be a jerk when he’s freaked out – but he’s already done enough for damage to his friend’s emotional state for one night.  Besides, Matt’s going to be asleep soon.  Foggy can apologize then.

            “This is going to help you relax,” she tells him. 

            “Yeah, right,” Matt scoffs.  He closes his eyes in resignation, but Foggy can see him biting down on his lower lip and holding his body steady to keep from running away.

            “We’re right here, Matt,” Claire reassures him.   
  
            But he’s not listening, not anymore.  Matt has his game face on, his devil face.  Claire depresses the plunger on the syringe.  A few seconds later, Matt’s expression melts away.  The tension eases out of him.  He falls into a lethargic silence, eyes open just a crack before slipping closed. 

            It’s too easy.  Foggy needs to hear someone else say it, “He is going to be alright, right?”  
  
            Claire removes the syringe and recaps the needle.  “The surgery is going to be fine,” she says. 

            “I sense a ‘but’ coming.”  
  
            She smiles softly, “But it’s not the surgery I would be worried about.  It’s Matt.”

            “I’m not letting him out of my sight,” Foggy insists.

            “You sure you don’t want restraints?”  
  
            “No restraints…” Matt moans.  His eyelids creep open.  “Tell her, Foggy…I’ve got the…” he winces, drawing his hands up to his ears.  They don’t make it before the strength leaves his arms again.  “Legal representation…and everything.”  
   
           “That’s covered by your Best Friend discount,” Foggy pulls Matt’s hands back to his sides.  Matt groans again, louder, but he doesn’t have the strength to fight back. 

            Claire rubs Matt's hand, “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

 

* * *

 

            Foggy spends his time warming up by pacing, trying to keep up with his thoughts.  He’s been going at this ass-backwards from the beginning.  Ever since he dragged Matt to the hospital, in fact, when he got it in his head that Matt was just being ridiculous.  Matt may have been melodramatic, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t telling the truth about how awful hospitals are for him. 

            “I’m Matt,” Foggy tries this again, “and I am freaking out because…because…” he closes his eyes to gain a little perspective.  He ends up walking into a wall.  “OW!  Geez…” eyes open, then.  It’ll have to do.  “I am freaking out because I can’t see and…and…the hospital is loud.  The hospital is very loud!  And I don’t know where I am.  There’s no one around.”  Ah, guilt, Foggy’s dear friend, returns with a vengeance and feasts on his intestines a little.  “I can’t go outside because it’s too cold, so I’m going to find the quietest place in the hospital.  Somewhere no one is going to find me, at least not until I figure out where I am.”

            Quietest place in the hospital: Foggy can think of some, but his ears don’t pick up on all the things that Matt’s do.  He can’t hear heartbeats without a stethoscope.  And what about sounds in higher frequencies?  If Matt can pick on those, he might actually head outside, though that would open up another whole can of worms in terms of sound. 

            “Damn it,” Foggy curses.  He is the one who needs to focus.  Matt needs a quiet space, one where very few people will go, that hopefully doesn’t smell bad, and isn’t too cold.  He’s not going to head to the wards, because he’ll be found.  He might try to steal some clothing and run outside, but as far as Foggy knows, they don’t just leave winter garb lying around.  No, Matt’s here, and he’s locked himself up against the menace of his senses. 

            Foggy calls Claire.  She doesn’t answer – back to work, he guesses.  He leaves a quick message on her voice mail.  

            He knows where Matt is.  

* * *

 

Happy reading!


	16. ...of Hospitals (Pt. 3)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Foggy sinks right alongside him. “No wonder you hate hospitals so much,” he bemoans, scoffing slightly. “I just thought you were proud. But this…you wake up, the room’s empty, the clothing hurts, alarms are going off. This is hell for you, isn’t it?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: the characters and concepts in this story are the property of Marvel and their related affiliates. This is an amateur writing effort meant for entertainment purposes only.
> 
> I feel like I open all of these chapters with an apology lately, but I really am sorry! I was able to update regularly all summer because of my schedule. Being back in the classroom has really wiped me out. I couldn’t wrangle this chapter together for days. I really hope you all enjoy it. 
> 
> Matt has popped his stitches in this chapter. I figure his operation was done laparoscopically though, and since Foggy has seen him lose a lot of blood in the past, I don't have the wounds causing a lot of problems. Forgive me, medical professionals, if I am taxing thy willful suspensions of disbelief. 
> 
> Readers, it was a joy to read all your speculations about where Matt was hiding. I’m disappointed that I finally had to confirm just one, since they all made for fantastic resolutions in my mind. Thank you so much for the game! Thank you so much for the support. Hope it’s nice where you are!

* * *

 

…of Hospitals (Pt. 3)

 

            The chapel in Metro-General looks like it’s been forgotten since the late 60s.  Nothing’s been updated: the floor is a mould brown colour and the walls have a jaundiced undertone.  There’s a smattering of mismatched furniture from donors, most of it well-worn.  Four chairs surround a small coffee table on one side, and two couches are arranged in an L-shape on the other.  The large cross hanging between the windows overlooks a podium and altar, the latter of which resembles a repurposed bar more than a religious relic.   

            Still, the room is warm, insulated, and a manageable distance from Matt’s hospital bed.  The perfect hiding spot – if not a little ironic – for a terrified devil.  Foggy takes small, quiet steps forward, shutting the door behind him.  The click of the latch makes the alter rattle.  Ah, yes, that’s Matt Murdock, hiding and panting and shaking because that’s what running away after surgery will do to you.

            Foggy takes a deep, calming breath.  He mentally composed a really great lecture on the way here, but the sound of Matt’s panicked breathing rips the rug out from under his diatribe.  The words scatter.  All he’s left with is a very composed, “Matt?”   
            The altar trembles from a surprised jump, followed by nervous wheezing.  Foggy makes his way slowly to the opposite side of the room.  “I guess this means I win hide and seek,” the breathing, already stringy, gets more frantic.  Foggy can’t figure out if he should raise or lower his voice, if humour is a bad call or a saving grace.  “So you can come out now!  It’s my turn to hide, and your turn to-oh!  Oh, my God!  Jesus, Matt!”

            The sound of his name sends Matt scampering.  He nearly takes the altar with him as he moves in an awkward, clumsy crabwalk away.  “Matt,” Foggy begs, falling into step around him.  “Matt, it’s me.  Matt, it’s Foggy!”

            “Stay away from me,” Matt growls.  Christ, he looks awful: like twice as sick and about eight times as terrified as he did pre-op.  He wears a bathrobe – heaven knows where he got it from – that, while white, looks gray from how pale he is.  Foggy can see Matt’s skin through his sweat-stained hospital gown.  There’s a circle of blood on his abdomen where his stitches have no doubt popped, and fresh blood droplets follow him along his wavering path to the couch. 

            He tries to climb it.  Chris, it’s almost funny: Matt spider-creeping up on the cushions only to hit the deck from how weak he is.  He doesn’t seem to register that he’s been beaten though.  The fall prompts a new round of flailing, this time rooted to the floor, and Foggy has to weave through his limbs on approach. 

            “Matt, it’s me!  Come on.  Can you hear me?  Can you hear me, Matt?”

            Matt doesn’t hear him, too consumed with battling Foggy off, but then the sound hits him with concussive force.  He wraps his hands over his ears and, while still kicking, lets his head drop towards his chest in defeat.  Foggy takes Matt by the shoulders just as the kicking subsides. 

            “I got you.  Hey, hey!” Foggy keeps his voice low and measured, not sure what Matt can hear through the vicelike grip he has on his skull.  “Matt, it’s Foggy.  I got you, buddy.  I got you.  It’s okay.  Just me.  It’s just me.” 

            Matt tilts and shakes out of Foggy’s grasp, fresh tears on his cheeks from…what?  Pain?  He’s been hurt way worse that this.  Blood loss?  Not a chance.  In a good week, Matt can lose a pint of blood and still show up for work the next day.  Also, neither pain nor blood loss make Matt this standoffish, this combative.  He lists away from Foggy’s touch like a calf being branded. 

            Foggy’s ribs put his heart in a stranglehold from the sight.  His palms get slick, tongue tightens, and stomach crumples up into an angry ball.  The last time he saw Matt this wrecked, this tortured, was after the fight with Nobu and Fisk.  It is just drugs, right?  Overstimulation and hypersensitivity, something along those lines.  Yes, must be, though Foggy has no idea what’s setting Matt off.  Sure, the lad doesn’t like hospitals, but the chapel is quiet.  Painkillers seems to be taking care of the post-operative pain.  There’s not much else for Matt’s world on fire to pick up on. 

            Right.  Right?  Christ, Foggy has no idea.  Just when he thinks he’s starting to understand Matt’s – for lack of a better word – condition, Foggy is reminded once again that he doesn’t know jack about Matt Murdock.   

            “Matt, look, I’m not trying to hurt you,” the crying continues, along with more muttering about everything being so loud.  The kicking resumes too, though it’s only Matt’s left leg this time, the right one finally figuring out there’s a wound nearby.  Foggy tries a different tactic, “Can you tell me what’s so loud?”  He drags one of Matt’s hands away from his ear and speaks in a low whisper, “What’s so loud?”   
  
            “Everything,” Matt shakes his head, elbows slicing just past Foggy’s nose.  “Everything, I can’t…I can’t…I can’t…”   
  
            “Okay, okay, we can fix that,” Foggy lets Matt’s hand go; it flies back to his ear.  Man alive, Foggy feels so far out of his depth.  He needs an adult.  One who’s trained in medicine.  A Claire.  He needs Claire.  She still hasn’t answered his text or voice mail though, because there are other people in Metro-General who need nursing.  **In Chapel** , he messages her, **bring a suture kit**. 

            “We’ll uh…we’ll get you some ear plugs or some headphones or a helmet or something,” Foggy suggests good-naturedly. 

            Matt continues babbling, “Hurts.  It hurts.”   
  
            “Yeah, buddy, your side hurts.  You popped your stitches.”

            “No, everything.  Everything hurts.  Side.  Arm.  Head.  This,” he tugs at his hospital gown.  Foggy gently eases his hand back onto the floor before can start stripping.  “I can’t.  I can’t…”

            “Again with the ‘I can’ts’,” Foggy sighs.  “What can’t you do?”   
  
            “I can’t see,” Matt stammers at last.  “I can’t see.”

            Foggy is about the break the news to Matt about his blindness, when it occurs to him that Matt isn’t talking about his eyesight.  When he was explaining the world on fire thing, Matt said it was seeing in a manner of speaking.  An abstract understanding of the environment based on his other sensory perceptions, none of which are working properly at the moment. 

            “You don’t,” Foggy chooses his words carefully, “you don’t need to see, Matt.  I’ve got you.” 

            Matt nods in what looks like understanding, two more tears tracking down his cheeks.  Then he props his feet on the floor and tries to stand, “I have to get out of here.”

            Once again, it would be comical, but he’s just so wounded that when he spills into Foggy’s arms, it’s heartbreaking instead of humourous.  Foggy eases him onto the couch instead of the floor, which is a great idea until Matt misconstrues it as an act of aggression and starts attacking him again. 

            “Matt!” the blows are delivered limply, but they still hurt.  Foggy is left with little choice except to pin his wrists and legs.  “Calm down!”

            “I have to leave.”   
  
            “Yeah, but do you remember trying that?  Do you remember how cold it is outside?”   
  
            Matt starts shaking his head, not wanting to hear this.  He pulls his hands cleanly out of Foggy’s grasp and plugs his ears.

            “Matt,” Foggy sighs in realization, “do you even know where you are?”   
            The fight leaves his legs.  Matt sinks inside himself, lips quivering from the rapid fire of his breath, and for a few brief moments, there is silence.  Then softly, the weeping restarts.  Fresh tears pour down his face onto his lap.  He tries to keep it contained in his mouth, but his lips open and the sound filters out into the room.

            Foggy sinks right alongside him.  “No wonder you hate hospitals so much,” he bemoans, scoffing slightly.  “I just thought you were proud.  But this…you wake up, the room’s empty, the clothing hurts, alarms are going off.  This is hell for you, isn’t it?”

            Matt doesn’t respond.  He doesn’t have to.  His shaky silence is all the confirmation Foggy needs. 

* * *

 

            The bleeding slows.  Matt’s trembling subsides.  Foggy can’t stop staring.  He paces in front of the couch, glancing at Matt every couple of minutes, half-expecting his friend to jump up in panic again.  Matt doesn’t.  Whatever drugs they had him on are metabolizing to the point where he just flinches from sounds only he can hear. 

            Until Claire arrives, at which point Matt freaks out again.  The noise seems to have thrown off his entire sense of space.  He guesses in his interactions with the space, barely acknowledging Foggy’s hand on his shoulder as he fights with thin air.

            Foggy tries a different tactic, “Matt, focus.  Come on.”  He is so tired.  How the hell is Matt still awake?  Is Matt awake?  “Matt, it’s just Claire.  Claire!  You remember Claire.”   
            “Matt?” she joins in.  The combination of their voices helps draw Matt back to reality.  He stops fighting and even seems to angle his body between them so Claire speaks to one ear and Foggy speaks to the other.  “There you go,” she says encouragingly.  “Matt, I’m going to check the wound on your side.  I’m not going to hurt you.”

            Her voice passes straight through him.  Not a single word sticks.  The seconds tick by in agonizing silence as Matt tries to place himself in relation to the sound.  He finally nods, but the movement is at odds with the world around him.  He’s nodding to avoid the issue, to appease the quiet, not because he understands what he’s been asked.  This is very apparent when Claire places a hand on his shoulder and eases him back against the couch.  Matt starts.  Tension floods his arms and legs in anticipation of a fight, and he stays like that the whole time Claire checks him over. 

            The kicked puppy stare returns with a vengeance, like a kicked puppy lost in a dissociative state.  Matt’s stare is completely vacant, hollowed out, empty eyes for an empty vessel.  “I’m going to text Karen,” Foggy informs them, and leaves the room too late to save himself from remembering how defeated Matt looks. 

            **Found Matt** , he messages Karen.  **We’re getting him back to his room.**

            She texts back quickly, **Great!  I’ll meet you at the hospital.  Just leaving your place**.

            Usually, Foggy’s great ideas come with a delay, but this time, he is struck with one the second he reads Karen’s SMS.  **Can you grab a few things before you come?**

            **Sure.  What do you need?**

            He gives her a short list of items, and then heads back into the chapel.  Claire is taping down a clean bandage over Matt’s waist.  “There,” she says. 

            “Thank you,” Matt says tiredly.  He’s more cogent but less awake, eyelids drooping from fatigue. 

            “Don’t thank me yet,” Claire replies, smoothing his hospital gown back over his extremities.  “You’re going back to bed here.  Can you walk or should I get a wheelchair?”   
  
            Matt’s eyes spring open, “I want an AMA.”   
  
            “You disappeared from your bed, ripped out your IV, and popped all your stitches.  You are lucky I’m not sedating you right now,” Claire stands up to her full height, a gesture Matt picks up on, and he shrinks into the sofa.  “You’re going to rest for a couple of hours, then take a walk around the floor and eat some solid food.  If you’re alright by then…”   
  
            “Foggy,” Matt begs. 

            Foggy buries his hands in his pockets guiltily.  Friends don’t let friends get caught by security, but they don’t let them evade hospital care following an operation no matter how dead their kicked puppy gaze gets.  “You’re staying, Matt.”

            He can still see Matt’s sadness when his gaze hits the floor.  Foggy combats his guilt as best he can with the belief that it will be better this time.  He’ll make it better.

* * *

 

            Music.  Playful electric pop, no lyrics, not a track Matt recognizes from his collection, but that’s okay.  Everything’s okay.  The song streams at a low volume and has only the good notes, the ones with rounded edges and slick sides so they land gently against his ear drums. 

            There’s other sounds – discordant hums, pings, beeps; the warble of Peanuts’ character voices, chops of steel on tiles, the swish of curtains opening and blankets being folded – but his ears avoid them without being told to.  They’re so far away, and Matt’s tired.  His ears are tired, his brain is tired; he’s exhausted on a cellular level.  He doesn’t need to focus to find his way back to the steady stream of notes from around his neck. 

            …which is a weird place for music to be coming from. 

            He jabs an exhausted hand at his neck, fingers limp and inept.  The smell of Foggy’s shampoo emerges from the effort.  First through his hands and then through his nose.  No, wait, that’s not right.  Matt shuffles, dislodging more scents – Foggy, laundry detergent, antiseptic – but they seem to burst through his skin or ears or eyes before his nose.  Trying to sort through the tangled wires in his brain is too much trouble though.  Matt has to settle, let them work out the mess themselves.

            “Good morning, Sleeping Beauty.”   
  
            Only it sounds wrong.  Foggy’s greeting comes with too many long vowel sounds that drag their points through the sludge coating Matt’s brain.  The words come from different directions too, sometimes shifting midflight, giving Matt the impression that Foggy is a constellation shifting corners of the nighttime sky.  

            The music distracts him, and Matt doesn’t have the motor control to do anything about it.  Foggy has to reach up and drag the sound away from his ears.  Matt braces himself for impact with the world, but he’s acclimated to the noise. 

            “Feeling better?” 

            Matt isn’t sure.  If he’s comparing to normal, no, he feels worse.  Tireder.  Yesterday afternoon, however, and last night… “Yes, I’m feeling better.  What uh…what was that?”   
  
            “The soundtrack to _Wall-E_.  Did it help?”

            He’s parsing through the words faster, even if they are dragging along his consciousness.  “Yeah,” Matt replies.  “Yeah, I think…I think so.  Where are we?  Are we…are we still in the hospital?”   
  
            The smell of antiseptic is so far away from his nose, hidden behind a wall of home scents and Foggy scents and himself-scents. 

            “Yeah.  Can’t you tell?”   
  
            “Kind of?” a little bit.  The dimensions of the room are apparent to him now, as well as Foggy’s location, but they all emerged so gradually that Matt didn’t notice their arrival.  “Foggy, what did you do?  Am I on something?  Am I…?” He moves and is definitely not on something.  His side jabs at his brain with red hot pokers, “Nevermind.”

            “Yeah, Claire took you off the good stuff last night.  You’re on garden-variety Tylenol.  Is that…is that okay?  Do you need something else?”

            “I’m just…wondering…” his thoughts keep disconnecting.  “Something’s wrong.”

            “Yeah, you’re right,” worry tugs at the edges of Foggy’s voice, “Something is wrong.  Your heart monitor is looking very strange, Mr. Murdock.  Has it occurred to you that you just woke up in the hospital and are not having a panic attack?”

            Matt considers this.  His pulse is normal, his pain is bearable (when he doesn’t move), and his mugginess isn’t accompanied by a terrifying sense of disorientation.  All his usual triggers are suspended at arm’s length by closer, more comforting signifiers, “That…might be it?”   
  
            Foggy’s hands whoosh up towards the ceiling, “I RULE.  Bow before me, staff of Metro-General!  Who has two thumbs and got Matt Murdock to stay in his hospital bed for the rest of the night without sedatives or restraints?  THIS GUY!”

            He groans, “Volume, Foggy.”

            “Oh, sorry,” Foggy tones it down to a joyful whisper.  “I rule!”

            “How did you…” Matt takes a moment to let the pain in his side die down before speaking again.  “What did you do?”

            “A magician never reveals his secrets,” Foggy basks in his victory a second more before, “But since you asked so nicely, I figured it out during your freak-out in the hospital chapel.” 

            Matt doesn’t remember, even when he asks his brain nicely to retrieve the memory, so he accepts that the recollection doesn’t exist and moves on.  Foggy begins, “Step one: comfortable clothing.  Sorry, they’re mine, but Karen grabbed the cleanest ones.  She also brought the fleece blanket from my couch.  Don’t worry – I did all the undressing.”

            “Thanks,” on both counts.  The t-shirt and sweats aren’t as comfortable as his silk sheets, but at least Matt doesn’t feel like peeling his skin off. 

            Foggy continues pleasantly, “Step two: noise control.  But not noise cancelling.  I found that out the hard way when you took a swing at me around six this morning.  Apparently, putting headphones directly on your ears is a good way to freak you out again.” 

            “Sorry,” Matt doesn’t remember that either.  His memories go from Foggy’s apartment to the ER to pre-op to now.  There’s suggestions of sensory stimuli during the blackout - a voice here, a smell there, a touch there - but all of it plays like a film soundtrack. None of it belongs to him.

            “Don’t worry.  You missed; it was scary and then entertaining.  I moved the headphones from the ears to your neck to fix the problem.  You seemed to like it.”   
  
            “I did.”   
  
            Foggy beams, and the world on fire turns yellow, “Step three: never, not for one second, not for an instant, leave Matt’s side.  Ever.”   
  
            The step really strikes a chord in Matt, who finally remember waking up in the hospital, alarms blaring, pain everywhere; the walls closing in with heartbeats and body odour and ammonia; bile rising in his throat because he can’t get his eyes to work, and if he could just see, he would be able to know where his dad’s voice is coming from, if dad’s even there.  Which he isn’t, because dad’s dead, but Foggy’s not.  And Foggy was there.  Where’s Foggy?  Where is he? 

            The actions return to him vaguely - the waking up, tearing off tubes and wires (another clue.  What is it?  Where is he?), racing to the window.  Foggy’s absence, everything hurts, everything’s loud.  They’re coming.  Why doesn’t he climb out the window?  Too cold, too cold, too cold.  He’s scared, not stupid.  He slips behind the door, waits, and then, as the crowd searches through the open window, he walks out.

            Foggy’s hand is warm on his knuckles.  Matt wrenches himself out of the memory just in time to hear, “I’m sorry I left you alone last night.”   
  
            The apology leaves a sour taste in the back of his mouth.  It’s not Foggy who needs to apologize.  “It was stupid of me to run away.”   
  
            “You had your reasons.”

            “They’re stupid reasons,” mostly panic-fuelled and drug-induced, latent terrors from a childhood accident.    
  
            “If you asked me that last night, I would have said yes,” Foggy clutches his fingers tighter, as if he’s worried that Matt might try to get away again.  “But after what I saw in the chapel…geez, Matt, I didn’t realize it was that bad for you.”

            He doesn’t like the sympathy hanging off Foggy’s every word, but he doesn’t know how to dispute it.  Being in a hospital, medicated, is as bad as Foggy saw last night.  In fact, “It’s worse.” Matt tugs at the edges of the fleece blanket and holds a breath made entirely of Foggy.  He has to try, at least; Foggy certainly is.  “Waking up here, it’s like waking up from the accident all over again.”   
  
            Foggy’s voice gets sadder, heavier, “You were alone?”

            “No, my dad was there.  I just…it took me a while to realize it.  I didn’t have any training then.  Everything was really loud.  My eyes...” Matt feels the phantom stab of chemicals on his corneas.  “My eyes hurt.  I couldn’t see.”

            The silence stands for a long, oppressive time, weighted down all the more by the tightening of Foggy’s grip on his fingers.  “That,” Foggy finally finds the words he’s been looking for, “sounds horrifying.”   
  
            “It is,” Matt admits.  He’s not comfortable with sympathy, but he’s come too far for that.  “I still shouldn’t have run off.”   
  
            “Well, next time, you won’t!” Foggy declares proudly. 

            “Next time?” there is not a molecule in his body that likes the sound of that.

            Foggy huffs, “Matt, I love you, and I don’t want to scare you into running away again, but there’s going to be a next time.  Thankfully, with my sure-fire, never-fail, three-step process, you are guaranteed to never run away from medical care again!”  He gives a satisfied hum, liking the sound of that, and sinks back into his chair.

            Matt can’t help a small smirk from creeping across his face.  Foggy must see it, because he removes his hand from Matt’s and states, “You’re already thinking of your next great escape, aren’t you?”

            He isn’t.  Matt’s mind is playing tricks on him, blending memories old and new into a pleasant amalgamation of Dad’s warm face under his hand and Foggy’s headphones by his ears.  Still, he can’t pass up the opportunity to mess with Foggy Nelson, “A magician never reveals his secrets.”

 

* * *

 

Happy reading!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I recommend any and all of the tracks from the _Wall-E_ soundtrack, but I particularly love "Define Dancing", and it was the track I was listening to for the last 'act' of this chapter.


	17. ...of a Nervous Breakdown

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Geez, Matt,” Foggy loses what little cool he had. “What is going on?” 
> 
> "I don’t know. I swear I don’t know. This has…I have never felt like this before. Ever,” Matt’s jaw gives out. There are tears in his eyes: exertion tears, even though he hasn’t done anything. He didn’t even wake up this morning because he didn’t fall asleep last night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: the characters and concepts in this story are the property of Marvel and their related affiliates. This is an amateur writing effort meant for entertainment purposes only.
> 
> After a very long hiatus, I finally wrote something I felt like I could post with this fic. It’s another fill for my H/C bingo card – a nervous breakdown – and it’s the first chapter that I have to attach trigger warnings for. This chapter deals with depression and some mild suicidal thoughts. I was reading that Matt suffers from depression in the comic books, and I wondered what that might look like on the show. 
> 
> A lot of this chapter is vague and detached. It’s an effort to reflect Matt’s mood. I hope it's effective. I feel like there are parts that might benefit from Foggy's perspective, and I may explore that later on. 
> 
> To all the wonderful people who are reading this fic: thank you. I know it’s been a very long time (almost a month!) since my last post, and I truly appreciate the readership. I hope you like this one.

* * *

 

...of a Nervous Breakdown

 

            The alarm goes off; he hits the snooze button.  Foggy calls; Matt ignores his phone.  He stays in bed, curled up on his side, letting the sound and silk swirl around him.

            Knock on the door; he doesn’t answer.  Keeps lying there, face half-buried against the pillow.  Go away, he wills the visitor.  Just go away, go away, go away.

            “Matt?” Foggy enters.  His footsteps come from all directions.  Multiple Foggy-s converge at the door to the bedroom.  Matt still doesn’t turn over.  It doesn’t even occur to him as an option.  Foggy takes his stillness as a sign that Matt’s asleep.  “Wakey, wakey, eggs and bakey!” he urges, approaching the bed and giving Matt a small shake.  The grip, the motion, and the proximity cause pain to collect in his joints.

            Matt groans, “Hi.”

            “You sick?” Foggy isn’t sure. 

            He has to think about it.  Sick would explain this, but Matt doesn’t feel sick, “No.”   
  
            Foggy’s heard that before, “Uh huh.  Flu?”

            “Not sick,” he’s not.  This is garden variety hopelessness.    
  
            Foggy doesn’t leave.  He keeps guessing, “Cold.  Strep.  Ebola.  Hanta virus!  You have Hanta virus!”

            The humour centres of Matt’s brain don’t respond.  They don’t exist.  He set fire to them in his sleep and now there’s nothing but smoke where his laughter used to be.  “Just tired, Foggy,” his jaw throbs from the motion.  Fine, no more speaking.  No more moving.  No more thinking.  No more breathing.  Matt lets his mouth close and snuggles deeper into the pillow.  He wills himself to stop, just stop, everything stop. 

            “Matt, talk to me, buddy,” Foggy shakes him again.  All the hurts play pinball inside Matt’s body.  He moans.  “You hurt?”

            Matt starts tugging other sounds out of the air to drown Foggy out.  The city plays chicken with his senses, speeding close and then swerving out of his grasp at the last possible second.  It’s long enough that Foggy should give up, but that only spurs his friend’s stamina more.  “I’m not going until I know what’s going on.”   
  
            “I don’t know what’s going on,” Matt finally admits.  He doesn’t _feel_ wrong.  He doesn’t feel right either.  He doesn’t feel anything.  There’s pain, sure, but pain’s normal.  Pain is living.  Constant.  Everything changes except pain.  Pain stays exactly the same.

            Foggy continues standing by the edge of the bed, waiting.  “Do you need anything?  Can I get you something?”

            Matt shakes his head.  That he can do.  “No.”

            “Are you going to get out of bed?”   
  
            “No,” it’s the first answer that’s come naturally to him.    
  
            Foggy paces unsteadily at the edge of the bed, “We are due in court in less than an hour.”

            “I know,” but Matt doesn’t care.  He doesn’t care that he doesn’t care.  Then he’s guilt-ridden that he doesn’t care.  His apology comes out as lifeless as he feels, “Sorry.”

            “Don’t apologize, buddy.  Just…you know, get up?  Get dressed?”  Foggy sniffs.  “Maybe take a shower between the getting up and getting dressed.”

            “I’m not going to court with you, Foggy,” comes out sounding like, “Unhhhhurrrr…” followed by a shuffle of blankets against his skin.  The silk itches today.  The mattress springs jut into his aching skeleton.  He wants to sleep, should be awake, needs to be in court, must protect the city, must get up, must, must, must.

            Matt drags the blanket up to his chin just as Foggy tugs it off him, “C’mon, buddy.  Up and at ‘em.”

            He reaches dumbly for cover and finds nothing but stale apartment air: cold sweat, unwashed skin and hair, the makings of a beard itching against his cheeks.  Matt hugs his arms to his torso, wincing from the sting of his tendons across his elbows.

            Foggy notices.  His heartbeat is a steady plod of sympathy and suspicion, “Okay, man, you’re not sick, you’re not hurt, so either you’re dying or you’re getting your ass out of bed.”

            “I can’t,” Matt mumbles as the mattress kisses his nose.

            “You can’t get out of bed,” Foggy says it out loud and the words still don’t make sense together.  “Matt, what is going on?”

            “I don’t know what’s going on.” 

            “Something’s going on.”

            “I don’t know,” Matt can’t believe he’s still breathing.  His lungs gave up on that idea a long time ago.  Brain too.  “I don’t know.”

            Foggy is thinking up a storm of heartbeats and heavy breathing, “Have you ever felt like this before?”   
  
            “No.”

            Actually, Matt doesn’t remember.  His memory refuses to cooperate, spewing up memories of his father dead, sensory overload at St. Agnes, the day that Stick left, Fisk and Nobu, lying to Foggy, lying to everyone.  He wants to sink into the mattress and disappear of the face of the earth, to melt out of existence.  Leave all these guilty, sick feelings in a body he can’t use. 

            “I’m sorry about court,” is the best he can manage. 

            “You really can’t get out of bed?”   
  
            Matt can’t even continue their conversation, “Can I have my blanket back?”

            Foggy’s moves in slow-motion.  The sound of the blanket and silk sheets twisting in his hands mimics the tightening inside Matt’s head.  There’s so many thoughts and all of them start with “I should” or “I must” followed by things he can’t so.  “I’m sorry about court,” is still the best he can do. 

            “Matt, you’re scaring me.”   
  
            “I’m sorry about-” Matt thinks, thinks, thinks.  There’s another word he needs to use.  Not ‘court’.  “-that.” 

            “I’m calling Claire,” Foggy tosses the blankets back to Matt.  The impact is bone-shattering.  Matt slumps even further into his bed, huddling up as best he can with as little movement as possible. 

            He experiences his first emotion of the morning as Foggy dials: Matt hopes Claire doesn’t answer.  He hopes she takes one look at Foggy’s number, recognizes a lost cause when she sees one, and ignores the call.  The dream dies when Foggy says, “Hi!  Matt can’t get out of bed.”  Matt shifts his hearing to the chaos outside his bedroom window, avoiding the conversation for as long as he can until, “She wants to talk to you.”   
  
            Matt rolls his head despite his neck’s protests.  Foggy sets the phone on his ear.  Claire’s voice is softer that his blankets.  “Matt, what’s going on?”

            “Tired,” the rest resists naming.  There’s a massive unknowable something living inside him, an occupying force that sees staying in bed as his only option for survival.   

            “How much sleep did you get last night?”

            “Does it matter?” because nothing matters. 

            “You’re not getting out of bed.  I have seen you torture a Russian mobster with several broken ribs and a concussion, and you’re not getting out of bed.”  
  
            “I’m not…” God, he wants to sleep.  He wants to be so asleep that no one can reach him. 

            “What?  Sick, hurt, or dying?”   
  
            Matt takes the phone in one hand, pressing it into his ear.  White noise pulsates on the line between them, an entire empty universe of black to match the empty universe in his brain.  Claire on the far side at the beginning of time and him, here, at the end of all things.  “I’m not getting out of bed.”   
  
            “How’s your heart rate?”

            The effort is beyond him, but it doesn’t take much.  His pulse is loud and fluctuating.  Fast then slow regardless of his breathing.  “Fine,” he mumbles.

            “Have you eaten anything?”

            “I’m not hungry.”

            “Are you nauseous?”

            All these questions…Matt’s scalp throbs.  He tucks his other arm beneath his head, driving his bicep against his ear.  “No.  Not nauseous.  Just not hungry.”

            “Are you in pain at all?”

            Matt can’t lie, “Everywhere.”

            The white noise shrinks between them.  Claire sounds closer.  Her voice curls warmly over his ear drum, “Have you ever felt like this before?”

            “I’ve always gotten out of bed in the morning.”  Not this morning.  Not any morning ever again. 

            “Put Foggy back on.”   
  
            “’Kay,” no need to ask why.  He tosses the phone over his head and shifts onto to his stomach.  The position makes his abdominals cramp, but Matt can’t bring himself to move again.  He’s wasted enough already. 

            Foggy yammers on behind him meaninglessly.  “No, no, it’s been better.  Yeah, surprisingly, when he wears body armour he gets hurt less.”  Matt lets Foggy talk.  Sleep hovers on the fringes of his consciousness, he can feel it.  He wills himself towards it, swimming against the waves of his exhaustion, and he is still awake when Foggy hangs up the phone.  When Foggy paces to the end of the bed and starts pulling the blanket over Matt’s legs.

            Matt wonders what Foggy is doing, why he’s encouraging this.  What he says is, “I’m sorry about court.”

            “Don’t be sorry,” but Foggy’s tone wants him to be a little sorry.  Just a smidge.  He tucks in the edges of the blanket around Matt’s shoulders sharply.  “Uh…Claire’s at work.  I have some ass to kick in court.  Are you going to be okay here by yourself?” 

            “I’m going to sleep,” not do any of the scary stuff Foggy’s pulse seems to think he’s going to do. 

            Foggy pats him on the shoulder, “Yeah, get some sleep.  I’ll call to check on you during recess.  Will you answer?”   
  
            Matt is honest, “Probably not.”

            “Geez, Matt,” Foggy loses what little cool he had.  “What is going on?”

            “I don’t know.  I swear I don’t know.  This has…I have never felt like this before.  Ever,” Matt’s jaw gives out.  There are tears in his eyes: _exertion_ tears, even though he hasn’t done anything.  He didn’t even wake up this morning because he didn’t fall asleep last night. 

            It’s a close contest as to who feels more guilt and self-loathing in that moment.  Foggy might be the winner.  He has the energy for the contest, after all.  “Whoa, whoa, okay, okay.  Just get some sleep,”

            Foggy’s hand is in his hair.  Matt feels the touch all the way into his brain, through all the crap, the racing thoughts, the shitty feelings.  It’s awful.  He’s awful.  “Sorry about court.”

            “Don’t worry about it.  Feel better, okay?”           

            “Okay.”  Matt doesn’t know what better feels like, doesn’t remember feeling anything but _this_ , but, “Okay.” 

* * *

 

            It’s not okay. 

            Matt wants to sleep; he doesn’t.  Ends up listening to the city pass by outside his apartment, to Foggy calling and Karen calling and Claire calling and letting them all go to voicemail.  To his blankets being too hot.  The room being too cold.  Lying on his right side, his left side, his back, his stomach.  Curled up into a ball, stretched out flat, twisted into a question mark, the letter ‘Z’, a squiggle.  Hungry, not; nauseated, not.

            He’s still breathing.  How is he still breathing?  He is so tired.  To the bone tired.  Too-tired-to-sleep tired. 

            The apartment door opens, closes.  Someone removes their shoes at the door and treads softly through the living room in socked feet.  She’s wearing a clean hoodie over her hospital scrubs, and her body heat causes goosebumps to shoot up and down Matt’s bare arm. 

            Her touch burns his arm.  Matt flinches and moves out of her grasp.

            “You’re cold,” she tells him.

            “You’re warm,” he counters. 

            Claire sits down on the bed next to him, setting her kit close to his legs, He can hear her stethoscope sliding against the zipper and winding around her neck.  “Can you sit up?”

            “I don’t want to.”

            “Have you slept at all?”

            “No.”

            She slips the stethoscope up and under his t-shirt.  Chill stabs through his ribs.  Matt sucks in a breath, forces it back out, and it occurs to him that he should not be breathing so fast.  He should be lying.  He should be trying to convince her that he is alright.

            He should be doing a lot of things besides lying in bed, but he can’t.

            “What were you supposed to be doing in court today?” she asks.

            Her arm wraps around his chest and plants the stethoscope under his pectoral muscle.  Matt breathes.  Breathes like he wants to keep breathing.  Breathes like it’s coming naturally to him.  Resents how forced it all sounds.  He wonders if Claire can hear him counting out a normal rhythm for his respiration. 

            Her arm is so warm around his chest.  He can’t help pressing against her as she moves to his other side.  “Doesn’t matter,” Matt stretches his arms out in front of him, taking the opportunity to hold her arm to his side.  She slips away a second later, leaving him alone with his thoughts.  “Foggy can handle it.”

            “What did you do last night?” she asks, folding up her stethoscope again. 

            “Doesn’t matter,” the fact that he doesn’t remember clearly doesn’t matter either.  His head’s full of cotton and cumulous, of rainy days and Mondays even though sun is pooling on his open, filthy palms.  Matt tugs his hands away from the heat.

            “Does it not strike you as odd that you aren’t getting out of bed?”   
  
            “I’m not thinking about it.”   
  
            “What are you thinking about?  And don’t say-”

            “Doesn’t-”

            Claire huffs, hopping off the bed.  She comes around to the other side, where he’s facing, and as she kneels in front of him, her essence swells through the cold and damp inside him.  Matt feels her heat as being warmer than the sun and a thousand times harder to avoid.  He doesn’t want to pull his hands away, and he can’t disappear.  Not when she grabs his hands in hers and holds on for dear life.

            She’s pulling, that pulse of hers, those arms.  They’re dragging him out of the mental dumpsters he’s crawled into, but there’s nothing to patch up this time.  Matt’s scar tissue.  He’s old wounds.  “Nothing happened,” he assures her.  “I didn’t even go out last night.  I came home after work, got into bed, and still haven’t gotten out.”   
  
            He’s suspended on the edge of her grasp, flitting in and out of her gravitational pull.  Hard to tell what she’s thinking when he can’t see the minutiae of her face, only hear the pull of her lower lip between her teeth.  “Any thoughts of self-harm?”   
  
            Not that he’d have the strength for it anyways, “No.”   
  
            Claire sighs, “If that changes, someone has to know.”   
  
            “Okay.”

            There would be a joke to lighten the mood.  Claire even puffs her breath like she’s gearing herself up for humour, but today it sounds more like she’s deflating.  “Normally, I’d say you’re having a breakdown, but breakdowns come with triggers.  You make it sound like this just happened.”

            “This did just happen,” not lying to her brings a short-lived sense of relief. 

            “You’re working too hard,” she says quickly.    
  
            “No more than usual.”   
  
            Claire rubs his swollen knuckles.  She has her own ways of knowing whether a person is lying.  At a certain point, she stops rubbing and just holds onto him, satisfied.  “You’re going to lie in bed all day?”

            “Not all day,” eventually, he is going to have to get up.  Matt can only ignore his body for so long before his bladder explodes, his dehydration headache gets worse, and the desperate urge to disappear gets the better of him. 

            Claire gives his wrist one final rub before rising, “I have to get back to work.  Call me.  Especially if you don’t want to: call me.”   
  
            She takes the air out of the room when she goes.

* * *

 

            Foggy’s footsteps trudge into the kitchen with bags of take-out and groceries.  A hum of excitement rumbles through the apartment despite Foggy’s slow, sympathetic respiration.  He comes to stand in the bedroom doorway. 

            Matt holds his breath, waiting for words that aren’t forthcoming.

            “How’d it go?” he asks, not capable of interest. 

            “They needed to call the cops to the courtroom,” Foggy drops his imaginary mic, “’cuz I totally killed in there.”   
  
            “Good,” Matt lets his eyes close.  Reopens them because that does nothing.  Open eyes, closed eyes: he’s wide awake.  Exhausted and awake. 

            Foggy comes and sits on the edge of the bed.  His weight causes Matt to twist slightly.  The blood circulates in the wrong direction around his brain.  Thankfully, Foggy grabs his shoulder before Matt can get too dizzy.  “You’re still in bed.”   
  
            “Yeah,” Matt agrees.  “I still don’t want to get up.”

            “Even for food?  I brought Thai.  All super mild, just the way you like it.”   
  
            “Sorry.”             
  
            “Stop being sorry.” 

            “…sorry,” guilt and shame are lousy bedfellows, but Matt’s wrapped up more tightly in them than his silk sheets. 

            Foggy sighs heavily.  He’s getting sucked into the misery, “Can we talk about this?”   
  
            “There’s nothing really to say,” Matt can feel Foggy staring through him and finding him lacking.  A big mound of lack right there in the middle of the bed. 

            “Come on, Matt, you’ve gotta give me something,” Foggy plants a hand on Matt’s shoulder.   “It’s been better, right?  You’ve been better?  No more late night phone calls!  Although…” Foggy’s hand loosens, like he doesn’t think he deserves to touch Matt anymore.  He lowers his voice to soften it, “Maybe that’s part of the problem.”

            “The fact that I’m not getting injured regularly is a problem?” Matt asks. 

            “When you get injured, you give yourself time to heal.  Not enough time, but still, time.  Now that you’re not, you never have a moment to yourself.  You go from work to…‘work’.”

            Matt accepts the theory readily, or at least doesn’t reject it flat-out.  He’s achieved a level of apathy where words just flow into him, around his thoughts, and sit there, uninvited but not unwelcome guests.  “It’s a theory.”

            “You have a better explanation?”

            “I don’t want an explanation.”   
  
            Foggy gets up and off the bed.  He’s in full defensive mode, all jerky movements and controlled breathing.  Sympathetic as he is, he is also tired of whatever this is, and even if Matt could blame him, he wouldn’t.  Matt blames himself more than Foggy ever could.

            “You gotta get up,” Foggy urges.    

            “No,” Matt begs in response.

            “Matt.”

            “No.”

            “You can’t just stay in bed, Matt!  You have to get up!”   
  
            He knows.  God damn it, Foggy, he knows.  He always has to get up, and he always does, and there’s no reason he can’t have gotten up today except that he just can’t.  He fucking can’t.  He’s crying silently into his pillow because he can’t, he can’t, he can’t.

            Foggy’s heart enters into a mad tap dance.  Once again, Franklin Nelson has gone too far too fast and not realized it until it’s too late.  He tries to save face by backing away from the bed, but Matt’s kicking the blankets free, knees and ankles and hips screaming in pain.  His calves, thighs, and abdomen scream too, because none of them are prepared to move.  Yet Matt forces them out, folds them over the edge of the bed, and sits up. 

            The universe spins on an unusual axis.  Matt instinctively follows it and ends up with his face back in the mattress, knees crashing hard against the floorboards.  He clings to the seam of the mattress for support, though even that feels like its slipping out of his grasp. 

            He feels finally.  Feels the weight of everything he’s carrying even if he can’t articulate what it all is, where it all comes from, why today it’s chosen to eat him alive.  Matt’s been better: fewer injuries, less downtime, more cases at the firm.  This _shouldn’t_ be happening to him.  He tells himself that all the way to the floor, where he sinks into a sitting position that he can’t move from.  Not even to get back into bed.  Fine, he decides, feeling nothing.  He’ll sit.  He’ll cry.  He’ll sit and cry and he’ll be alone and never get up again. 

            “God, Matt, talk to me,” Foggy begs.  He’s on his knees with Matt’s leg under his hand.  “Say something.  Say anything!”  
  
            Matt’s teeth chatter.  “There’s nothing to say, Foggy.”

            “Sure, there is!  There’s plenty to say!  Like time heals all wounds!  And a good night’s rest helps!  And it gets better!”  Foggy doesn’t sound so convinced about that last one, but he may be giving Matt the benefit of the doubt.  He tries again, shaking Matt’s leg good-naturedly.  “Come on, Matt.  It does get better than this.”  
  
            “I know that,” Matt reassures him, nodding automatically.  “But I can’t…” there’s that word again, the one that cracks his voice to piece and sends shivers trickling down his spine.  Matt chokes on the shards of his broken voice and has to start again.  “I can’t stop feeling…that this is it.  This,” he pats the bed, “this isn’t the last time I’m going to be stuck in bed.  And what if I’m…what if it doesn’t go away.  What if I can’t keep trying...what if I can’t…?”   
  
            Foggy’s answer comes so quickly it takes Matt a long minute to understand: “I’m gonna be there.”   
  
            “That’s not always going to be enough, Foggy.”    
  
            “Then I’ll call in Karen.  And Claire.  And my mom, Father Lantom, the National Guard, and the Navy God damn Seals if that’s what it takes,” Foggy clamps a hand around Matt’s shoulder.  Solid as an oak, that Foggy.  Stronger, too.  “This isn’t it, Matt.  This is…this is a bad day.  Have you…have you ever talked to someone about this?  About what you’re feeling?”

            “No,” he’s never been bedridden by what he’s feeling before though. 

            “Maybe you should.  Not that I’m not here to listen – I am.  Tell me anything – but I’m better with general feelings of angst, the occasional existential crisis, that kind of thing.  I’ll leave crippling feelings of hopelessness to professionals.”

            “I don’t want to see a shrink, Foggy.”   
  
            “I don’t want to see you having another nervous breakdown.”   
  
            Matt sighs, “True.”   
  
            “Give it some thought, okay?” Foggy rubs a hand into Matt’s neck, causing his head to bob.  The contact causes his defences to plummet, and his thoughts churn more and more slowly the longer Foggy stays nearby.  Self-loathing retracts its claws, on the retreat, and even though Matt can feel it hovering, Foggy does a good job of keeping it at bay. 

            “You want to get back into bed?”

            “It doesn’t…” Matt leans his scalps into the mattress with a deep breath.  On second thought, “Yes.”   
  
            “I’ll help you,” Foggy takes his hands, “but only if you’ll eat something.”  

            Matt still isn’t sure if he’s hungry or going to vomit, but he gives a singular nod, “I’ll try.”   
   
           Foggy lifts him up, “For today, that’s enough.”

            It has to be.

    

* * *

 

Happy reading!


	18. ...of Necessary Touch-ness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Matt,” he says. 
> 
> Stick grumbles from the entryway about Matt not being able to hear him. “One more word out of you, old man, and I’m going to throw a chair at you!” Foggy says, adding softly, “Not that there’s a chair left to throw…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: the characters and concepts in this story are the property of Marvel and their related affiliates. This is an amateur writing effort meant for entertainment purposes only.
> 
> It feels so good to post twice in two days! Reminds me of the summer holidays. 
> 
> This installment channels my other fic We Were Both Disappointed, because Stick is in my head now. He has taken root. Initially, I was reluctant to write the character because of his abrasiveness, but since re-watching the episode “Stick” (a lot, lol), I find myself enjoying his character a lot more. Scott Glenn kills it, and he’s helped by a script that lets him be subtle and mysterious (elements I’ve tried to keep alive here through Foggy’s perception and Matt’s incapacitation).
> 
> Of all the chapters, this one falls way more heavily on the comfort side of things, and I feel I should apologize for how briefly I deal with his injuries. Usually, I try to be much more invested in medical realism. 
> 
> Readers, I say this all the time, but it’s a pleasure to hear from you, and I am so grateful to have your kind attention. Please enjoy.

* * *

 

…of Necessary Touch-ness

             Foggy can hear the struggle going on in Matt’s apartment from the hallway.  Footsteps shuffle madly over the old floorboards, wood creaks and splits, an old man says, “Damn it,” and, “Come on, Matty.”  He enters to see Stick barreling towards the wall, thrown by an unseen force from the living room.

            “About damn time,” he grumbles, peeling himself off the bricks.  Blood pours from a split on his brow, shrouding half his face in glossy crimson.  Foggy is taken aback.  He goes to ask who else is in the apartment, but Stick interrupts him, “Go ahead, stand there a little longer.  Take a picture.  Have a beer.  Put your feet up.”  A table leg explodes against the wall by Stick’s face, and splinters shower through the air.  “Nothing to see here.”  
            “What the hell is going on?” Foggy demands, advancing.  Aside for him and Stick, the only sounds from the apartment are more frantic footwork and ragged breathing.  “Who the hell is that?”

            Stick takes a step into the hallway, dodging a sofa cushion being chucked in his direction.  “The President,” he may as well swat the back of Foggy’s head from his tone: that’s how stupid the question is to him.  “It’s Matt.  I dragged his ass off the street when I found him wandering away from a brawl.”  
  
            The movements in the next room quiet, but the scratchy vocalizations get louder to compensate.  Foggy finds himself moving without making the conscious decision to.  An icy chill spreads through his chest.  “Matt?”

            Stick spits out a wad of blood from his bruised mouth, “He can’t hear you.”

            “What?” Foggy stops.

            “Are you hard of hearing too?  I said he can’t hear you.  Someone got the jump on him, smashed his ears up pretty good.  They’ll be fine, but for now…” Stick directs his blind eyes towards the mess of furniture on the floor where he was once standing. 

            Foggy nods exasperatedly, “Well, that’s just great!”    
  
            “He can’t talk either,” Stick adds. 

            Foggy rounds on Stick, keeping one ear on the movements – or lack thereof – in the next room as he approaches.  “Why the hell can’t he talk?” Stick’s got an awful lot of blood on his hands and not all of it can be his.  “What the hell did you do?”

            “I would’ve shut the kid up a lot time ago if I wanted to,” Stick snarls.  “He breathed in some stuff he shouldn’t.  Not sure how.  Sit him down in a humid room for a while, it’ll clear up.”

            “And let me guess, that’s what you were trying to do before I got here?”

            “Before and after I called your punk ass,” and Stick is not going to let Foggy think differently. 

            Foggy takes a steadying breath.  The noises from the living room have all but stopped.  Only Matt’s raspy vocalizations, recognizable now as desperate attempts at speaking, at being heard.  They’re the saddest sounds Foggy has ever heard, and Foggy’s heard Matt make some pretty sad noises: the pinched choke of his cry, the silence that comes with his heartbreak, his moody mumbling that verges into pouting territory.  They’re no match for the desperate croaking and keening of a deafened Matt trying to hear himself.

            Steeling himself against yet another scene that will stick with him forever, Foggy rounds the corner to find his friend.  Matt is kneeling in the living room.  He’s hunched over in the billboard light, hands on his hips, ready to fight even if he can’t possibly do so effectively.  Blood runs in thin rivulets down both sides of his neck, caked with dirt, dust, and other crap that no doubt keep his vocal cords from working properly. 

            Foggy is thoroughly unprepared, as always.  Months of late-night phone calls, of stitches and staunching blood flow; of making sure Matt’s still breathing, not feverish; that the wounds aren’t infected.  Months of Googling, Wikipedia-ing, YouTube-ing, and attending first aid seminars.  Of putting together a giant-ass sack of supplies.  He is never going to be ready for the sight of his best friend in pain.

            “Matt,” he says.

            Stick grumbles from the entryway about Matt not being able to hear him.  “One more word out of you, old man, and _I’m_ going to throw a chair at you!” Foggy says, adding softly, “Not that there’s a chair left to throw…”  Matt seems to have already weaponized what few pieces of furniture he has. 

            Foggy drops his duffel on the ground, and Matt reacts as if hearing the impact, jerking slightly into a defensive position.  His breathing picks up into a sharp rattle.  “If he can’t hear me…” Foggy looks down at the floor.  Vibrations?  Matt can definitely still feel.  Foggy tests the theory by stomping a foot on the floor.

            Matt gets back to his feet.  He holds his breath for a long moment.  The apartment swells with a terrifying silence before Matt traipses noisily back a few steps.  Stealth-mode is apparently dependent on being able to hear. 

            “Okay,” Foggy makes his way slowly across the room, keeping his footsteps heavy enough to penetrate Matt’s senses.  His weight on the floorboards keeps Matt moving back and back until he can’t go back any further and he has to slink along the window.  He starts keening again, whimpering, and Foggy has to stop.  “Damn it, Matt,” as if he doesn’t hurt enough.  As if his memory isn’t bombarding him with a million-and-one images of Matt in this same awful position.  “Matt, it’s me.  Matt, it’s Foggy.  Matt.  Matt!  MATT!”

            Foggy kicks the couch a few times to make himself feel better; it doesn’t work.  Not for him or for Matt, who picks up on the motion and sinks as best as he can into devil mode.  No way for him to hear heartbeats, to see Foggy, to smell him or know him except the one sense Matt has left to work with.  A sense that Stick was no doubt trying to work with before Foggy showed up, and look how well that worked for him. 

            Then again, Stick’s an asshole.  “You waiting for him to tire himself out?” he asks from the far side of the room.

            “Can’t be worse than trying to hogtie him or put him in a sleeper hold or whatever the hell you tried,” Foggy intends to make it through this unscathed.  That goes for him and Matt. 

            Stick remains unconvinced, “You ever tried to play nice with a warrior?”

            “Thanks to you, I do it twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week,” screw you very much, Stick.  Foggy takes a few more steps forward and reaches for Matt’s shoulder, resisting the urge to say his friend’s name.

            Matt picks up on the motion and swings his arms defensively, nearly snapping Foggy’s wrist and kneeing him in the stomach. 

            Foggy backtracks to the couch, “Let’s wait for him to tire himself out.”

            As if on cue, Matt proceeds to keel dizzily over to his right side and collapse onto one knee.  The swoon sends Foggy back into motion, catching his friend gently by the shoulder as Matt’s elbow catches him ungently on the face. 

            Stick rejoins the fray as Foggy gets pulled to the floor.  He gets a good look at the old bastard looming above Matt’s shoulder, ghostly from the billboard light, “Going easy on him is about the worst thing you could do.”  
  
            “I am not going to hurt him,” Foggy insists just as Matt wraps him into a very powerful, very painful lock.  He squeezes his next few words out through a collapsing trachea, “I’M NOT!  NO MATTER HOW MUCH…OWOWOW!  God damn it, Matt!” the lad’s knee is digging into his left kidney hard enough to bruise.  Foggy thrashes to free himself as the room starts to go black.  He runs a hand over Matt’s shoulder, over the taut tendons in his neck, the blood from his ears. 

            The knee in his kidney digs deeper and Matt jerks his head away, wounded again from the touch.  Blood tacks Foggy’s fingers together.  His whisper joins the litany of rasps coming from Matt’s mouth.  He got hit on the ears earlier.  No wonder he’s not happy to have someone probing them now.   
  
            Stick sounds like he’s having a hard time getting Matt to cooperate with whatever he’s doing.  Foggy can’t so much see as feel the effects of the old man’s movements; that is until Stick’s hand flies down past his face to land on Matt’s neck.  Matt rolls Foggy head over feet, and the three men end up tangled on the floor in a chain of headlocks with Foggy on the very bottom rapidly losing consciousness.

            “Get up,” Stick urges him from on high.  “Come on, yah son-of-a-bitch.  Get your dumb-ass up and save yourself.”

            The light from the billboard splutters in his vision.  Foggy’s spluttering too.  He keeps one hand on Matt’s forearm, trying to tug his neck free, and continues to reach the other gently to his friend.  He reaches Matt’s cheek and pats it lightly, gently.

            “Oh, for fuck’s sake…” Stick moans.  Matt’s head jerks out of Foggy’s grasp as he yanks his arm tighter.  “Get up before he puts you in the ground, shithead.”  
  
            Foggy is so close to the ground he can taste grave dirt.  His tongue is squeezing its way out of his mouth, popping like a pumpkin stem out from between his lips.  All the more reason to keep his hand on Matt’s face, to force himself not to tear his friend’s hair out.  To keep thinking, “It’s me.  Matt, it’s just me.  Matt, you know me, and you trust me, and you’re killing me let me go let me go let me go…”

            The arm on his neck unlocks.  Foggy spills out of the darkness in the dancing, lavender light of commercial hell.  Air.  He thought he’d never taste it again, and air tastes so good.  Never leave me again, air.

            He looks back over his shoulder and expects to see Matt passed out in Stick’s grasp.  Instead, Foggy finds Stick struggling against Matt’s frantic attempts to free himself.  His eyelids are fluttering rapidly, and his mouth hangs open for air.  There are tears on his cheeks though, and a hand proceeds to reach out in Foggy’s direction.  Not violently: searchingly, desperately, imploringly. 

            Foggy catches it in his, and he feels Matt’s grip tighten: don’t let me go, don’t let me go, don’t let me go.

            “Stick, stop!  STOP!”  Foggy slams his fist into Stick’s bicep.  Matt’s eyes are fluttering to glossy, teary whites.  “STOP!  IT’S OVER!  IT’S OVER!  STICK!”

            The old man growls and tightens his grip. 

            Matt pokes him in the eye. 

            “AH!”

            Stick recoils.  Matt falls.  Foggy catches him.  Wraps him up in arms and chest, careful not to inhibit his breathing, and holds him until the gasping stops and the weeping starts.  Until Matt’s fight response gives out.  Until his arms drop limply to his sides.  Until Matt is burrowing into the drop beneath Foggy’s collarbone like it’s the only home he’s ever known.

            “He can’t hear you,” Stick snaps. 

            Foggy didn’t even realize he was talking, delivering his usual reassurances of, “It’s okay.  You’re going to be fine.  Just calm down.  I’m here.” He moves an arm up from Matt’s back and gestures to Stick angrily, “You can’t see me giving you the finger, but that doesn’t mean I’m not doing it.”  
  
            He returns his hand to Matt’s back and rubs: up and down, up and down.  “It’s okay, it’s okay,” Matt’s keening starts to settle with every word.  Foggy furrows his brow, has his eureka moment, and then taunts Stick.  “He can feel the vibrations of my voice.  So you can go suck salt.”   
  
            Stick staggers away into the blackness, ostensibly to do just that, muttering, “Pussies,” on his walk of shame.  He wipes at the blood on his face as he goes. 

            Foggy ignores him.  Matt is stiffening under his grasp again.  The tears have stopped, but so has whatever sense of calm they had just seconds ago.  Foggy doesn’t give him the chance to start freaking out again.  He helps Matt up to his feet and ushers him to the bedroom. 

            No sooner is Matt deposited on the bed than Foggy extricates himself from his grasp.  He flicks on the lights in the room.  And wants to turn them off again immediately.  It’s worse tonight.  It’s definitely worse.  He’s seen Matt crying; seen Matt with sensory deficiencies; seen Matt injured.  This is different somehow.  Matt is so apart from the world.  He curls his shoulders defensively, but the action is undirected because he can’t get a read on the room beyond the vibrations against the floor.

            Foggy can’t keep looking.  He acts instead.  Clean clothes, towels, water, first aid kit: he makes sure his footsteps are heavy so that Matt knows he’s around.  He comes back to the room to see Matt in the same position on the bed, too scared or embarrassed to move. 

            The bleeding from his ears has stopped.  Still, Foggy rings Claire on speakerphone.  She doesn’t answer, so he leaves a message as he guides Matt’s hand to the zippers and clasps on his armour.  The lad is cogent enough to help out, reassuring Foggy this isn’t a concussion no matter how dizzy Matt appears, swaying as he is in a clockwise motion.  It may not be the worst night ever either, unless Stick’s wrong about Matt’s ears and mouth. 

            Scratch that: Stick doesn’t have to be wrong for Matt to be having the worst night ever.  His body armour comes off, and he wraps his arms around his chest, a weak attempt to hide his shivering and swaying.  The effort leaves him looking more vulnerable.  Foggy’s heart breaks anew.  He works quickly to get Matt into a clean pair of pants, hoping clothing will take the edge off.

            It doesn’t.  Matt’s look continues to worsen.  He’s gray, he’s shaking, he’s fighting back tears.  Usually, his posture’s engaged, directed, but tonight, he slumps more and more in on himself, developing a full-blown hunchback.  Foggy tries his best to keep the mood light, but it’s hard to do without using words.  All his touches cause Matt to start, and when he takes his hand away, Foggy feels like he doesn’t exist for Matt at all. 

            He places a glass of water in one of Matt’s hands and a few Aspirin in the other.  Briefly, Foggy considers the stronger meds he keeps in the first aid kit.  Matt wouldn’t notice the difference tonight, and he could use the relief.  One look at him, though, and Foggy knows better.  He, Foggy, would know the difference.  Not to mention the fact that Matt’s addled enough without chemical influence. 

            As if reading Foggy’s thoughts, Matt fingers the pills in his palm suspiciously.  “It’s just…” but Foggy stops.  Speaking isn’t going to help.  He rubs Matt’s wrist reassuringly, gently helping him to raise the glass and pills to his mouth.  Matt hesitates, shaking, and doesn’t move.  He closes his eyes, lips quivering, the black smudges of whatever’s keeping him from talking properly still painfully evident on his face. 

            Foggy is at a loss of what to do next.  He withdraws his hands, Matt starts shaking.  He holds onto Matt, and Matt just sits there, lost.  Nothing helps, everything hurts: yes, this is precisely what his best friend, freshly recovered from a nervous breakdown, needs.  A good dose of being blind, deaf, and mute. 

            Stick marches into the room – footsteps audible, for whose benefit, Foggy’s not sure.  There’s still blood on his face, but his head wound is mostly closed.  “Get some water to clean him up,” Stick grumbles.  “Put a bowl of it on the radiator for his throat.” 

            Foggy appreciates the direction even if it is coming from a murdering, child-abusing bastard.  “If you touch him again-”

            “If he touches you again,” Stick counters.  “Your neck’s rawer than he is.  I was trying to knock him out.  He was trying to kill you.”  
  
            “Shucks.  If only someone hadn’t trained him to be a psycho-murderer,” Foggy rolls his eyes.  He pats Matt on the forearm – _I’ll be back_ – and heads for the kitchen.  “Help him take those Aspirin.”

            By the time he comes back, the glass is empty and on the nightstand.  The Aspirin’s gone.  Matt’s still a crooked, broken kid on the edge of the bed, but he’s starting to pull himself back together from the wreckage.  Foggy puts a metal bowl of water on the radiator, another on the nightstand.  Stick shoves a cloth into Matt’s hand and guides him by the wrist towards the bowl on the night table.

            The effort is slow, cautious.  Matt’s so tightly wound and distrusting.  Foggy reaches for the cloth, “I can-”

            Stick swats his hand out of the way, “He can.” 

            Matt finds the water; Stick releases his wrist.  He makes a few soft noises, then clams up.  Even without hearing, he seems to recognize something’s wrong with his voice.  He focuses instead on the motions: dipping the rag into the water, wringing it out, and scrubbing the blood from his ears, neck, and shoulders.

            “He’s still shaking,” Foggy notes, walking towards the thermostat.  He’s surprised to see it already cranked as high as it will go, the dial swung far into the nineties.  He looks back to find Stick standing at his full height by the bed, listening to Matt cleaning himself off.   
  
            Without being asked: “The steam from the water will help clear his throat.  He’ll be chatting again in no time, won’t you, Matty?”

            Matt wipes at his cheeks, oblivious.  A kid lost in a daydream, eons away from the real world.  He looks scary-young at the moment, massive puppy eyes and trembling lower lip.  Foggy fixes his attention on Stick instead. 

            The old man gives a curt nod, satisfied by the response – or lack thereof, “Yeah, you will.”  
  
            Foggy half-expects him to ruffle Matt’s hair after the remark.  Can’t say why.  This is a man who was strangling Matt earlier.  Foggy raises his hands in mock surrender, “I’m going to clean up.”  

            Neither Stick nor Matt responds. 

            They are going to have to refurnish the living room.  Foggy makes a pile of furniture limbs and sweeps up the splinters.  He gets Matt’s apartment looking like a home instead of a warzone.  By the time he finishes, Stick is hobbling back into the kitchen.  He goes to the fridge and returns to the living room with two beers in his hands. 

            “Don’t give him alcohol,” Foggy can’t believe he even has to say it. 

            Stick tilts the bottle towards him in what looks more like a threat than an offer, “It’s for you.”

            Foggy retraces the old man’s steps in his head, considers how long it took for Stick to get the beer from fridge to living room and whether that’s enough time for him to poison it.  Poison doesn’t seem like the bastard’s style, but neither does pseudo-paternalistic comments about Matt’s healing factor.  He accepts the beer, “Thanks.”  
  
            “Don’t mention it,” and Stick means it.  He takes a long pull of his own beer and drops onto the couch. 

            Foggy stares at the light coming from the bedroom.  He can see Matt’s feet under the blankets.  Dear God in heaven, Stick didn’t tuck him in, did he?  And without Foggy noticing?  He drifts closer.  Yes, indeed, Matt Murdock is wrapped up in his blankets, whether by Stick’s hand or his own.  Damn, Foggy is sorry he missed that. 

            “His hearing’s going to get better, right?” Foggy asks. 

            “He’s going to be fine,” Stick assures him gruffly.  The tone is defensive, probably since Foggy hasn’t taken his eyes off Matt and is starting to get ideas about the nature of Stick’s true character. 

            Foggy switches off the bedroom light.  In the darkness, Matt looks like he’s still shaking, though the heat and humidity in the bedroom are enough to quell the most rattled of nerves. 

            He’s about to join Stick in the living room when he hears it: the wispy staccato of Matt’s breathing.  His fearful gasps of air into what must, to him, be a very dark, very lonely room.  Foggy takes a long pull of his beer and trundles into the bedroom.  The rattle of his footsteps make Matt’s shaking all the more apparent.  He’s very careful, then, when he plants himself down on the bed to put a hand on Matt’s shoulder first.  “Hey, it’s me.  I’m here.  I’m here, buddy.”

            “What the hell are you doing?” Stick demands. 

            “Being a good friend,” Foggy feels Matt shifting under his hand.  Trying to get closer, not trying to get away.  He adjusts so his arm drapes over Matt’s chest, right by the lad’s terrified heart.  Matt huddles around Foggy’s limb like it’s a lifeline.  “Get some sleep.  Things’ll be better in the morning.”

            “He can’t-“  
  
            “That was for me!  I said that for me.” Foggy leans in close to his friend’s ear and whispers, “I didn’t.  I said that for you, Matt.” 

            “ _I_ can hear you.”  
  
            Foggy groans.  He takes a long sip of his beer.  There is not enough in the bottle for him to last all night like this.  “You can go now,” he says.

            Stick’s suddenly at the doorway; Foggy almost chokes on his beer. 

            “And miss the slumber party?”  Stick asks, allowing his footsteps to rattle across the bedroom floor as he moves.  Matt makes a swishing sound and tenses up.  Stick places a hand on Matt’s foot as he comes round the end of the bed. “The kid nearly bashed my brains in tonight.  You’d send an old, concussed, blind man out on the rooftops?”  
   
           The comment is a distraction if Foggy ever heard one.  Stick’s hand moves quickly away from Matt’s foot, and when he comes and sits on the opposite side of the bed, he doesn’t try to reach for Matt again.  He doesn’t turn his head towards Foggy or Matt either.  He nurses his beer, wincing slightly from the taste or his head wound or his proximity to actual, real-life humanity. 

            He stays nonetheless.  Epic, abusive asshole who twisted Matt Murdock up into a ninja-vigilante, who actually strangled him earlier, who is currently being sued by Nelson and Murdock, stays.

            Foggy can’t help but smirk the next time he takes a sip of his beer. 

            Stick can tell.  “Pussies,” he curses. 

            “So go,” Foggy challenges him, tightening his arm protectively around Matt.  The action is appreciated if Matt’s deepening breath is any indication. 

            Stick says nothing.  He takes another drink from his beer, leans back against Matt’s headboard, and stays.

           

* * *

 

Happy reading!

 


	19. ...Matt Needs a Sidekick

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Matt’s post-concussive symptoms are worse than he wants to admit, and Foggy takes matters – and a baseball bat - into his own hands.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: the characters and concepts in this story are the property of Marvel and their related affiliates. This is an amateur writing effort meant for entertainment purposes only.
> 
> I sincerely apologize that I left this fic for so long. I have been meaning to get back to it for a while, actually started several prompts, but I had stretched myself too thin with the hurt/comfort. Work wasn’t helping: lots of stress that not even fanfiction could fix. 
> 
> I’m happy to be back. This is a prompt that came in a lo-o-o-ong time ago from a reader whose name I cannot find. I will go scrolling back through the comments and reviews, but I apologize for not being able to thank you personally! 
> 
> Readers, I also have to thank you! Thank you for reading this fic. I hope you are having a wonderful time – wherever you are, whatever you do!

* * *

 

…Matt Needs a Sidekick

 

            The static buzzing inside Matt’s skull bursts with the impact of wood on skull from behind him. 

            He whips around, preparing to catch a baseball bat with his hand instead of his head, but the blow never comes.  The alley murmurs; footsteps scratch against the pavement near the wet thud of a body hitting the ground.  There’s a garden of heartbeats, all unconscious save one pommeling its owner’s sternum in a victory march.  Smells of sweat, blood, and baseball bat paint a rather menacing picture of his current circumstances, until Matt finally has the courage to utter the impossible conclusion he’s come to, “Foggy?”  
  
            “Foggy?  I know not of this Foggy of whom you speak!” the voice is affected in a larger-than-life way, a megalomaniacal, Saturday morning cartoon character who stumbled out of celluloid into a back alley in Hell’s Kitchen.  Matt feels the swish of the baseball bat waves through the air and damn near takes his nose with it.  “Oh, sorry…” Foggy mutters, stopping, and then, upon realizing that he’s dropped his façade, readopts his previous voice, “I am the BATman!”  
  
            The urge to laugh is overwhelmed by the seriousness of the situation…and the pounding in Matt’s temples, “That’s not funny.”  
  
            “It’s a little funny!” Foggy declares in his robust, cartoony drawl.  He leans closer before Matt can walk away and drops his voice into a whisper, “And would you stop calling me Foggy?  Geez, you don’t hear me calling you by your civilian name.”

            “Go home,” Matt tells him, “ _Foggy_.” He heads into the darkness of the alley and is disappointed to hear Foggy still behind him.  “I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”  
  
            He smoothly makes his way from the ground to the top of a dumpster to a terrace, and though he ends up on the roof, the interim steps get lost in his carbonated brain.  His hearing fizzles in and out of focus.  Down feels up and up feels sideways.  Matt stumbles and sways towards the ledge, where he stops before he can plummet into the city below.

            Footsteps prattle from all directions thanks to his muddled hearing.  Impossible that Foggy made it up onto the roof so quickly, and yet, it’s Foggy.  Matt can tell because his heartbeat is a tired, steady walk all the way to his side.  Classic Foggy. 

            “You been taking parkour classes?” Matt asks, head abuzz within his mask.  Foggy wears a mask too by the smell of it: fashioned from a balaclava and duct tape.  The odour leaves a sour taste on Matt’s tongue.  “And shopping online?”  
  
            “There was a ladder to the fire escape behind the dumpster, but you knew that!  You were just showing off when you scaled this building complicatedly-”

            “Foggy-”

            “-with a head injury.”

            “My head’s fine,” Matt lies.  His head is a lot of things, and injured is all of them, but, “I can’t keep taking nights off.  People are starting to doubt the devil exists.”  
  
            “They’ll have plenty of reasons to if you get yourself killed.”  
  
            It’s a tattered argument, worn so well and so often that Matt no longer feels an accompanying rush of guilt.  Thankfully, he needn’t offer a tattered response.  Foggy has given him a new one.  “What happens if you get killed?  That’s going to be a lot more likely in athletic gear, football pads, and…” he sniffs, listens, “…is that a leather jacket?”  
  
            “That’s right, Murdock!  My crime-fighting style is on fleek!”

            Matt can’t attest to that visually – or linguistically for that matter.  What the hell is ‘fleek’?  Based on Foggy’s tone, ‘fleek’ can’t mean ‘ridiculous’ or ‘insane’, though Matt would substitute both those terms in place for what he suspects Foggy looks like.  Admittedly, he’s having a hard time getting his senses to work together, but based on his perceptions, Foggy is a hulking, leather-clad maniac with a baseball bat. 

            At the risk of saying something mean, Matt settles on, “Go home.”  
  
            “Make me,” Foggy dares him. 

            “I will.”  
  
            Foggy’s heartbeat spikes.  He dodges Matt’s senses and returns from a different angle, this time over the shoulder, “Oh, ho!  And how are you going to do that, Devil of Hell’s Kitchen, when you can’t stand up straight?”

            Matt corrects himself, only to realize that’s not fear he hears in Foggy’s heartbeat; it’s deception.  The jerk has lied to him.  And Matt’s correction coupled with his fuzzy sense of uprightness almost lands him face-down on the rooftop.

            “This isn’t a game, Foggy,” his bark is worse than his bite.  When he reaches, it’s for balance, and Foggy is only too happy to provide.  Matt lets the world relax into stillness, a place for everything and everything in its place, before he releases Foggy. 

            The world ripples into motion as soon as he’s standing.  Foggy lecturing doesn’t help any, “You have two options.”  
  
            “I take it your going home without me isn’t one of those options?”  
  
            “You are,” Foggy points the baseball bat towards him and swings it away, “correct, sir.”  
  
            Matt sighs, “What are my options?”  
  
            “You and me head back to your apartment together for a fun-filled night of resting your bruised brain, or you and me venture forth into the city for a fun-filled night of vigilantism.”

            “What about the third option where we go our separate ways?”  
  
            “URHH!” Foggy makes the sound of a buzzer on a game show.  “No such thing as a third option in this case, and if you weren’t concussed, you would know that, because I know you know how math works.”

            Matt sways physically and mentally, because there is one option Foggy isn’t mentioning.  He could run for the neighbouring rooftop, use the windowsills he can hear cutting the breeze to descend into the alley.  Disappear into smoke like the devil he is.  Unfortunately, there’s an awful lot of blanks his brain refuses to fill in, or maybe is incapable of filling in at the moment.  The distance between this building and the next is difficult to gauge with watery echo in his ears, and his sense of balance continues to churn. 

            But he can’t go home.  Not because his reputation will suffer: because there’s work to be done.  “You don’t engage,” he tells Foggy sternly, moving in the direction he thinks he’s supposed to be going.  “You hang back, lie low, and after this-”

            Foggy is not listening, “Oh, hell yeah!  You and me, buddy!  Daredevil and the Batman!”  
  
            “Stop calling yourself that.”  
  
            “You’re right.  It’s trademarked.” As if that’s the only problem with his attempted superhero moniker.  “I guess I’ll be…the Devil’s Henchman.”  
  
            “You could be quiet?” Matt suggests.

            Foggy scoffs him, “That’s a terrible superhero name.  Oh, you mean actually quiet!  That I can do.”  He lowers his voice to a whisper that Matt doesn’t have to focus to hear.  “Silent as the grave.  Grave, grave, grave…” his voice returns to normal volume, “The Gravedigger!”

            Matt can’t be bothered to respond.  He reaches the opposite side of the rooftop and plants his hands on the ledge.  “Try and keep up, _Foggy_ ,” then he launches himself into the fizzling unknown.

            Muscle memory takes over once his direction’s acquired, and Matt lets it carry him towards his destination.  He navigates the torpor of city sound with leaps, bounds, and flips, carrying Foggy’s heartbeat in a white-knuckled grip.  He hopes he loses Foggy, hopes that the next leap will leave Foggy stranded but safe on a rooftop.  Unfortunately, Matt’s not moving as brusquely as he would like.  Foggy stays close despite his lack of training and ridiculous get-up.

            “Where…are we…headed?” Foggy asks breathlessly from behind him.  “Who…are we taking…down?”  
  
            Matt veers off course suddenly, vaulting onto a fire escape, over a drain pipe, across some scaffolding, and then he’s back on a roof dodging clotheslines and chimneys. 

            Foggy has stopped at the fire escape.  Actually, the fire escape rails have stopped him, clattering against his leather and polyester costume.  “Not cool!” he calls out.

            More clattering follows.  Matt creeps his next few steps despite his earlier haste, and he regrets the decision.  To slow, not to leave Foggy behind.  His mind flies forward at his previous speed, and when it tries to backtrack, it circles his skull, lost and dazed and more than a little confused.  He careens into a tin-panelled wall, bounces off, gets more lost, all the while with Foggy’s frustrated grunts spiralling around him. 

            “Could’ve gone home.  Could be in bed right now.  But no!  Has to pass out on a rooftop,” Foggy is suddenly right behind him.  Matt ends upright, pasted to the wall that caused his collapse out of necessity.  “You awake?”

            “Yeah, I’m awake,” Matt gives himself thirty-seconds to make sure that he’s going to stay that way.  The spinning, aching, sweaty-sick feeling is back with a vengeance.  All the more reason to keep moving, keep moving.  “Gotta keep moving.”

            Foggy stops him, “Can we skip the part of the conversation where I tell you that’s crazy?”

            “The men in the alley from before.  They were talking about a new employer.  Powerful, shady, resourceful.  No name.”  
  
            “Sounds like Fisk,” Foggy agrees.

            “Yeah,” Matt winces, straightening.  All his insides seem to have returned to their proper positions, including his brain.  “There’s a meeting tonight.”

            “He’ll be there?”  
  
            “Not for long.”  
  
            Foggy isn’t holding him back, but the possibility hovers in the air threatening.  Matt hopes that, at the very least, play time is over for Foggy.  The true gravity of the situation has dawned on him.

            It hasn’t. 

            “Guess it’s a good thing you have back-up,” Foggy declares in his cartoonish voice.

            Matt groans, “I’m being serious.”  
  
            “So am I!”  
  
            “Running around on rooftops in a leather coat wielding a baseball bat: whatever happened to there being a…a system in place?  Laws to follow?”  
  
            He is such a hypocrite.

            “You are such a hypocrite!” Foggy echoes his thoughts.  “You are in no position to scold me for dressing in a costume and kicking ass.  Besides, I’m not moonlighting as a vigilante.  I’m here to make sure my friend doesn’t get himself killed.  I’m here for you.”  
  
            “And what happens if you get hurt?  Or killed?  You’re not trained for this.”  
  
            “You’re in no condition for this,” Foggy reminds him. 

            Matt can’t help but admit – mentally – that Foggy might be right.  He takes small steps forward, pleased that his body doesn’t backfire.  “You _don’t_ engage,” he says it again, as if the more he says it, the truer it becomes. 

            Foggy huffs, “Yeah, yeah.  No engaging.  Got it.”

            His heartbeat, however, charges into a deceptive rattle. 

            Matt tears off as fast as he can.

            “Oh, God damn it,” Foggy cusses from behind him.

* * *

 

            The meeting is on the first floor of a gutted tenement.  Matt can hear the broken glass rattling beneath brown paper and plastic duct-taped to the window frames.  The voices weave their wave to the rooftop and his ears mistake them at first for more ringing sounds.  Wind whispers, nothing more.  Eventually, he can make out the usual vagaries: shipments, finances, alliances.  His head swirls and fails to keep up, and the buzzing is the city?  Or is that his head? 

            He’s not even sure how he got to the rooftop. 

            And that’s how he loses the voices again: the fear that he has missed time.  That’s he’s worked his brain to a bloody pulp.  Foggy’s heartbeat is gone…home?  Gone for good?  Matt drops a hand against the ledge of the rooftop.  The fight – there’s going to be one: for abandoning Foggy, for going out with a head injury – brews brutal in his headspace.  He left Foggy for the standard criminal jargon, and now he’s not sure what his next step is.  There’s an awful lot of heartbeats in the building below, some attached to guns, all attached to fists.  A few, he can fight, but to take them all down would require…

            “A sidekick?!”

            “Quiet!” Matt hisses at Foggy’s…positions.  He can’t pin down where his friend is standing amidst the fizzling torpor of his muddled hearing.  The footsteps beneath are staggered though, curious as to what kind of crazy compels a person to show up and shout, “Sidekick!” on a rooftop at night. 

            “How many are there?” Foggy whispers.

            “Too many,” the footsteps are clustering together below them.  Floorboards creak in conversation before the figures disperse.  They’re on their way to the roof.  Matt retreats, pissed off anew: first that Foggy’s there.  Second that he’s injured.  Third that _Foggy’s there_.  “We’re getting out of-”

            Except he doesn’t know how because his bruised brain can’t recall the way out. 

            Foggy twists his shoulders to the opposite direction.  Matt finally hears the wind cutting around a neighbouring rooftop bearing the smell of rusted metal. 

            “I didn’t get up that way.”  
  
            “Probably not, but that’s how you’re getting down,” Foggy pats him, “because it’s the only way I know.”

            Distantly, Matt hears the word _hurry, hurry, hurry_ blaring in his skull and causes the whole building to rumble beneath them.  Hinges squeak, wood snaps against brick, and Matt hasn’t told Foggy to, “Get down!” before a bullet snaps through the leather of Foggy’s coat.

            He isn’t sure who gets to the doorway first: him or Foggy.  All he knows is that the gun stops firing, the baseball bat swings in a fast, wide arc, and the smell of blood in the air gets stronger.  This time, however, it doesn’t smell like Foggy.

            Matt slams the rooftop door and shoves their attacker’s unconscious body against it.  Not much of a blockade, but it’ll do.  Foggy heaves a shuddering breath, one that crackles with pain.  The heat from his blood sweeps over Matt’s chin, but it’s not gushing.  The bullet grazed him; he’ll be fine so long as they get the hell out of there. 

            Another bullet rips through the door.  Foggy tears Matt away or Matt jumps out of the way.  Whatever happens, they’re dashing and leaping onto the next rooftop.  Foggy takes a moment to recover, propping himself up with his bat.  He’s tachycardic, and Matt is too despite his training, because he’s having trouble keeping track of himself, let alone his ill-trained friend. 

            Foggy trips the next couple steps, limping slightly from his fall, but at least he’s moving.  Matt lets him take the lead and follows the thready clamour of Foggy’s pulse all the way over the edge of the rooftop, down the rickety ladder.  Strange how his brain refuses to blot out the next few seconds.  Alone, Matt’s content to forget things; with Foggy, he has to be attentive.  He has to be alert.  He has to know there are two men rushing into the alley to catch them, and that both are armed but only one has his gun drawn so that’s who Matt goes after.  He leaps against the wall and takes out his target.  Meanwhile, Foggy swings that bat of under the second man’s arm, knocking his gun onto the ground as he draws it.

            Matt allows himself a half-smile.

            Thumps and snaps burst through the post-concussive fog, and the echoes through the alley give Matt the first clear sense he’s had in days of his surroundings.  A man below him failing to keep up with the melee; his hands switching from punches to searching for his long-misplaced weapon.  The crunch of ribs under Foggy’s baseball bat immediately before it too is lost to the alley floor.  Matt is about to leap to his friend’s aid when another one arrives unarmed.  He chooses to fight the devil and loses.

            Perception grows smeary as the sounds blend together.  “Fog-“ Matt can hear footsteps racing about inside the building.  He stops himself, “Uh...we have to go.”

            The punching stops.  A body hits the ground.  One heartbeat pounds furious, conscious, under the haze of blood wafting through the alley.  “This way,” Foggy wheezes, and Matt trails after his footsteps until they’re elsewhere.  Matt’s not sure where, but he is sure, by the way Foggy starts to laugh, that they’re safe. 

            He is also sure, by the way Foggy’s laugh turns into a quiet, quivering, half-cry, that it’s time to go home.

            “Foggy,” Matt says softly.  He pats what he thinks is his friend’s uninjured shoulder and hears blood sticking to his fingers.  Or Foggy sniffling back tears under his balaclava.  Probably both.  _Focus_ , Stick tells him.  Matt does so, “I need you to tell me where we are.”  
  
            The balaclava comes off, dragging a wave of perspiration, blood, and tears.  Foggy’s hands slap against his lap.  He gestures, but Matt can’t tell which way.  “My apartment’s a block in that direction,” he says dejectedly, embarrassedly.  Sniffles and swipes at his nose.  Pokes Matt towards where home lives. 

            Matt pats him on the other shoulder.  More blood fills the air along with a small moan.  “Sorry,” he says, and means to list what for, but his brain can’t comprehend all the things he needs to include in an apology.

            Foggy rises to his feet, “S’okay,” he mutters, and Matt gets the sense he’s forgiven for more than simply patting his friend’s bullet wound.  He groans his way through taking off his leather jacket and drapes it over Matt’s shoulders.  It easily covers his costume.  Matt understands and takes off his mask. 

            Pulse spike.  “What is it?” Matt asks.  His voice warbles as if underwater.

            “Nothing,” Foggy sniffles.  He grabs Matt by the arm and starts walking too quickly for it to be nothing.  “Home time!”  He pulls his cell phone out of the coat pocket and hits a few numbers, muttering, “Calling Claire time…”

            There’s a warm river inching over his earlobe and down his neck.  Smells like Foggy.  Smells like blood.  Same difference tonight, really.     
  
            The silence between them turns the air into a solid object.  Matt breaks it, nipping his lips against the fragments of the shattered, mute air.  “Talk to me,” he urges.  The world is spinning and Foggy’s words have the ability to ground him. 

            They speak quietly even though Matt can’t hear anyone around.  “That was exhilarating,” Foggy admits, “and terrifying.”  
  
            “Yeah,” Matt agrees.

            “I ran at a man with a gun.”

            “You beat a man with a gun unconscious.”  
  
            “With my bare hands!”

            “With your bare hands.”

            “I got shot tonight!”  
  
            “You got grazed.”

            “Yeah – because I got shot!” Foggy’s voice is nigh impossible to read.  Exhilarated or terrified, one of the two, and always at different moments.  He continues running through his internal monologue.  “I almost died.  You almost died.”  And then, as if it’s not obvious, “We almost died.”  
  
            If there’s a stock response, Matt doesn’t know it.  His only thought is, “I try not to think about that.” 

            “How?  How do you not think about dying?” 

            The question is twofold: in part, the closest approximation of _Matt, how can you not care about your own life_ without repeating it verbatim.  In part, it’s Foggy’s cry for help.  He doesn’t face death as often as Matt, so he needs to know what the hell to do with the overwhelming knowledge of his own mortality. 

            He feels the answer bubbling out of the bruising inside his skull, rising through his cloudy hearing, “I think about the lives I’m saving.”  

            “We didn’t save lives tonight,” Foggy grumbles. 

            Matt corrects him, “You saved my life tonight.”

            Foggy’s heartbeat enters a steadier rhythm.  It agrees, even if his head is supplying a logical rebuttal.  Technically, he wouldn’t have to save Matt’s life if Matt rested after a brain injury or wasn’t a vigilante.  He doesn’t say any of that though, “Did you get the name you wanted?”  
  
            “No,” Matt sighs.  “I could have heard it and not remembered…”  
  
            Foggy shifts next to him, shaking.  At first, Matt thinks he’s crying again, but Foggy surprises him by laughing.  Soft at first, then a little louder, a little more rolling.  Matt joins in, and together, they make what Foggy calls, “The saddest sound in the world.”

            Matt doesn’t let him think like that for long, “Still want to be my sidekick?”

            “I thought you didn’t need a sidekick?” Foggy counters.  He dons a fake, guttural voice that Matt suspects is supposed to parody the devil of Hell’s Kitchen, “Daredevil doesn’t need a sidekick!”  
  
            Matt laughs in spite of himself, “That doesn’t sound like me.”   
  
            “Kind of sounds like you,” Foggy laughs too, and Matt is pleased to note that the sound descends into comfortable silence, not tears.

            Small victories.

 

* * *

 

Happy reading!  
           


	20. ...Matt's Too Late

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Please, Matt. There is nothing you can’t tell me, alright?” his confidence wavers, but he doesn’t correct himself. “Nothing.”  
> “I can’t…I don’t want you to leave again.”  
> “I’m not going to leave.” Of that, Foggy is absolutely certain. No matter what comes next, he is not going anywhere.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: the characters and concepts in this story are the property of Marvel and their related affiliates. This is an amateur writing effort meant for entertainment purposes only.
> 
> Funny story – this is based off a prompt I received recently, and special thanks goes to the reader who submitted it. I needed this. I was having trouble getting anything written for the past few weeks when the message arrived. While struggling, I poured through some of my abandoned drafts for ideas. Turns out I had already written the intro for this as part of an earlier fic. That and the fantastic idea were enough to get this chapter written. Thank you, reader!
> 
> I think I was channeling the inimitable Momentum Deferred's fic Sunshine with the foreheads in this chapter. I couldn't help myself: if you are not reading Sunshine, go, now. If you are reading Sunshine, go now. The fic - and it's spin-offs - are glorious. 
> 
> This chapter contains references to Jessica Jones and the Avengers. Also, warning! This chapter contains reference to the murder of a child. 
> 
> Readers, I need to thank you all so much for giving this fic your kind attention. Thank you for stopping in! I know my updates have gotten further apart as of late, and I can’t guarantee another before February, but I so appreciate your readership. Thank you. Hope you are finding good things to read! Cheers!

* * *

 

…Matt’s Too Late

 

            Claire doesn’t give Foggy a chance to knock.  She slips into the hallway instead.  All of Foggy’s confidence about getting Matt back on his feet drains out of him.  It can’t be good if they have to talk outside.

            “He can probably still hear us, you know,” Foggy points out.

            “Probably,” Matt agrees from inside the apartment.  His voice is somewhat muffled by the door.

            Claire raises her phone before Foggy can launch a retort.  Oh, she’s a beautiful genius: her phone is going to do the talking for her.  Claire types a quick memo and holds it up for Foggy to read: **He’s better than he looks.**

            Foggy fumbles for his own phone and types back:  **That could actually mean anything**.

            She taps out another line.  Foggy sees, **He got stabbed again** , and he immediately makes for the door, but Claire stops him while finishing her message one-handedly.  **BUT that isn’t why I called you.**

            Foggy is about to ask why.  Claire holds up a finger to silence him, demanding more time.  He gives her the few seconds she needs, because that she gave him can only have preceded some very terrible things for its recipients.  When it’s done, he doesn’t have to respond with anything new.

            **Something happened** , reads Claire’s phone.

            Foggy retypes, in all caps this time, **THAT COULD ACTUALLY MEAN ANYTHING.**

Claire fires back, also in all caps, **YES IT COULD AND I DON’T KNOW WHAT. HE WOULDN’T TELL ME.**

            A chill uncoils up Foggy’s spine.  The silence gives way to an unbearable ringing in his ears.  Something happened can mean a lot of things for the average person, but when it comes to a best friend who is also a crime-fighting vigilante with untreated clinical depression, the possibilities run the gamut.  Something really could mean anything.  He could be hiding a worse injury, he could be in a deeper depressive state, he could be stressing about an event from several years ago…

            Claire puts her phone away.  Matt is allowed to hear this part of the conversation, apparently.  “I left some antibiotics on the counter and some fresh dressings.  He needs rest or meditation,” the next part she addresses over her shoulder, towards Matt, “and to call me if it gets worse.”

            Matt doesn’t respond to that.  The whole apartment radiates with his, “I’m fine, stop asking, just go away and stay with me at the same time” vibes.  Yes, siree, something happened, and it isn’t pretty.  Foggy suspects that tonight’s emotional trauma is going to going to break the current records of my-ex-girlfriend-is-an-assassin-hired-to-kill-me and my-former-mentor-is-a-psycho-douchebag. 

            Foggy grips his duffel a little tighter, gathering his resolve.  If there is one thing he is good at, it’s taking care of Matt Murdock.  Add to that his insane ability to get people to talk about things they rather wouldn’t.  He can handle this.

            Which reminds him…

            He flashes one more memo at Claire with his phone:  **Can I get him drunk?**

            She smirks sadly, appreciating the attempt at humour.  “Have a good night, Foggy,” and she walks away. 

            Foggy pockets his phone, “That wasn’t a no.”  
   
           “Definitely wasn’t a yes,” she replies.

* * *

           

            There is a light on in the kitchen as Foggy enters and it casts the whole apartment in an uncanny light.  This is Matt’s apartment – same furniture, same floor, same walls – but somehow it’s _not_.  Shadows duck low behind the furniture.  The light cuts harshly on the floor.  Foggy feels like he’s crossing into a parallel reality, like he’s stepped across the threshold of reality and entered a bizarre netherworld. 

            The chills claw back into his spine tenfold.  Something happened.  Claire didn’t have to tell him; Foggy knows in his bones.  He kicks off his shoes and braces himself for the conversation that’s coming.

            He finds Matt’s armour strewn across the floor in front of the couch along with bloody pieces of gauze.  More uncanniness: this scene feels a lot like the night Matt staggered in after his fight with Nobu and Fisk.  And the night that followed, when Foggy stormed out, because Matt’s face is twisting ever-so-slightly in pained sadness.  He walks slowly out of the kitchen, beers in hand.  The line of gauze on his shoulder marks the site of a new scar, a new member to an already busy club of knife wounds and shoddy sutures.  Foggy’s interest is more practical than that though.  Matt has had way worse injuries; he isn’t upset because of the physical pain.

            Foggy takes the bottle Matt offers mutely.  The cap’s already off.  This beer has been waiting for him. 

            “What?” Matt asks innocently, as if the beer isn’t a distraction.  As if it isn’t there to divert attention away from his obvious suffering.  He eases himself down onto the couch.  He’s already taken a long pull from his drink. 

            Foggy drops his duffel, “I don’t know what.”  He considers the spot next to Matt on the couch but takes the armchair instead.  Matt acts as if he’s not paying attention, putting all his effort into another big drink from his beer.  “You know what.  Why don’t you tell me what?”  
  
            Matt stops drinking, swallows, thinks about speaking.  Doesn’t.  Goes back to drinking. 

            It’s probably not Stick then.  Foggy’s acquainted with the old bastard well enough that he’d get named if he was the problem.  Matt’s stab wound doesn’t look to be from a sai, so Evil Ex-Girlfriend probably isn’t to blame.  Losing a battle to an evil crime lord makes him weepy.  Post-fight drinking calls for an extra dose of tragedy. 

            Foggy drops his attitude and softens his tone, “What happened tonight?”

            Matt struggles to hold his face in a neutral expression.  He speaks with his devil’s voice, low and gravelly, “Leave it alone, Foggy.”

            “You know I’m not going to do that.”

            “Leave.  It.  Alone.” 

            Shatnerian delivery: this must be bad.  Foggy wonders if he ought to be drinking.  “Do you want me to call Father Lantom?”  
  
            The mention of his priest has the opposite effect of what Foggy intended.  Matt twitches, face twisting into a cry before he suppresses the emotion.  He mouths the word, “No,” but doesn’t make a sound.  He has to shake his head. 

            Foggy’s blood turns to liquid nitrogen in his veins.  Won’t talk to Claire, won’t talk to him, _won’t talk to Lantom_.  “Did you...?” no, he can’t pose the question like that.  He knows better than to think like that.  “Did someone…?”

            “Please, Foggy,” Matt splutters.  He scrubs his face so hard the skin peels over his bones. 

            “Please, Matt.  There is nothing you can’t tell me, alright?”  his confidence wavers, but he doesn’t correct himself.  “Nothing.”

            “I can’t…I don’t want you to leave again.”

            “I’m not going to leave.”  Of that, Foggy is absolutely certain.  No matter what comes next, he is not going anywhere. 

            Matt snivels, winding up to his big confession.  He wants to say it, can’t say it, it’s too horrible: “I killed a boy tonight.”

            The ringing in Foggy’s ears comes back with a vengeance, because the air has left the room.  Words turn to ash in his mouth as his voice scrapes back into his chest.  At first, he can’t remember what was said that caused the room to collapse.  Then, when Matt’s voice comes back to him, Foggy stops himself.  No.  No, absolutely not, no.  That didn’t happen. 

            Only it did happen.  It must have happened, because Matt is drinking and choking and crying.  Foggy dumbly hands Matt his beer.  The lad doesn’t take it; he’s too busy fighting sobs. 

            “I heard…I heard him crying.  He was in a basement a few…a few blocks away.  I hadn’t heard him before because…” he skips over all the reasons Foggy can think to provide: the fact that he’s not God, the fact that he’s only human, the fact that he is one man who can’t possibly hear every cry of every person all the time.  Instead, Matt trails off and presumably fills in the rest of the statement with a self-flagellating remark.  He didn’t hear the boy because he’s weak, because he’s incapable, because _he can’t save the city_.  “He was begging to go home.  He wanted to see his mom.  He wouldn’t tell her.  He…he promised he wouldn’t tell her.”

            Foggy is barely listening.  He remains in cold denial, and he thinks he knows where this is going.  He wishes he were a better friend or that they lived in a better world or they had more alcohol or that this were a problem alcohol could fix.  “You didn’t kill him,” is all he can say.

            Matt has tears in his eyes, but he’s gone scarily still.  Only his lips continue to tremble.  “He was alive until I got there.  His heart was beating faster and faster.  The room he was in got clearer and clearer.  There was a man with him.  The boy knew him by name: an uncle, I think.  Small guy.  Nervous.  He had a knife.”  The knife is a sticking point for Matt.  He rubs a hand over the lower half of his face as more tears pour out of his eyes.  “He had a knife…”

            …and I should have done something about it.

            ….and this is all my fault. 

            “I tried to…”  Matt grimaces so hard his face balls itself into a knot.  His lips open around his teeth.  Tears gush from behind his closed eyelids.  “I got to the basement door.  I could still hear…there were two heartbeats.  There were two heartbeats, and they were beating so fast.  And he was whispering for his mom, he just…he just wanted his mom.

            “I was careful.  Opened the door quietly.  Followed the movement.  The uncle was…was reassuring him.  But the boy had gone quiet all of a sudden.  I couldn’t hear him except for his heart.  His heart was…”

            Foggy can hear it, a tiny thrum through darkness, the flap of a hummingbird’s wings.  The longer he listens, the louder it gets, until he realizes he is on a collision course with the end of the story, with what he knows is coming.  “You didn’t kill him,” he says it again, as if that will make it alright.  As if that will keep the boy’s heart beating. 

            “I got the door open.  I walked inside and…I smelled blood.  I smelled blood everywhere.  And there was only one heartbeat left.”

            Matt breaks so fast.  Foggy is faster.  He ditches his beer on the table and leaps forward, catching his best friend’s head with his shoulder.  He catches Matt’s hands with his chest and pulls him into a fierce hug.  So tight his ribs pull from his sternum.  They’re trying to open like butterfly’s wings and drag Matt Murdock inside to that warm cavern under Foggy Nelson’s heart.  But flesh is stronger than bone sometimes even if it’s weaker than a blade. 

            “I killed him-“

            “You didn’t kill him.”

            “I should have been there.”  
  
            “There was nothing you could have done.”  
  
            “I was so close…”  
  
            Foggy shakes him for emphasis, “There was nothing you could have done.”

            “If I had just…just a few seconds…”

            “There was _nothing_ you could have done, Matt!”

            “He was a kid!  He was just a kid!”

            Foggy needs a better vantage point.  He grabs Matt by a shoulder and pushes, preventing the lad from splitting his head in two with Foggy’s collarbone.  Their foreheads meet by accident, but Matt needs bracing.  All of a sudden he’s balanced brow-to-brow, and Foggy is trying not to cry, trying not to fall, trying to hold them both together.  It’s the closest they’ve ever been but it doesn’t feel new.  Feels like they’ve held each other like this before. 

            “Matt, you didn’t kill him.”

            “I did, Foggy.  I did.”

            “Matt, you didn’t-” he’s not listening; he’s nodding.  Constantly affirming that yes, yes, he killed this boy.  Foggy grips Matt by the back of the head and shoves their foreheads more tightly together.  “Matt,” he shakes.  Anger’s a hell of a thing.  “Matt, you did not kill this boy.  Stop.  You did not kill him.  The only person responsible is the bastard with the knife.”

            “He begged me to kill him, you know?”

            “Who, the kid?” Foggy worries he blanked out part of the story because tonight is horrifying.

            “The uncle,” Matt’s breathing is starting to come back under his control.  He puts more of his weight against Foggy.  “He wanted me to do it.  Attacked me to do it.”  
  
            “You didn’t.”  Foggy’s not asking; he’s stating facts. 

            Matt answers anyways, “No, I didn’t.  I want…” he grips Foggy’s bicep firmly, imploringly.  _Please don’t leave._   “I wanted to, but I didn’t.  I didn’t, Foggy.”  
  
            They can’t get any closer, but damn, Foggy is going to try.  He is not leaving.  “Anyone would have.”  He wants to kill this guy. 

            The sobs start up again.  “I should have been there.” Then he wouldn’t have to want to kill someone and a boy would still be alive. 

            Foggy wonders what the right thing to say is.  No, you shouldn’t have been there in time to save a boy’s life?  Even he calls bullshit on that.  “Matt, _everyone_ should have been there in time.  We live in a world with superhumans, space-Vikings, giant, green anger-monsters, and billionaires in weapon-suits!  There’s a badass PI in Hell’s Kitchen with super strength who can resist mind control!  Why were you the only person breaking down that guy’s door?”

            “That doesn’t make it right.”  
  
            “The only person who killed that boy is his uncle.  Say it, Matt.”  
  
            “Mn.”

            “Say it, Matt!”

            He doesn’t.  He screws his mouth up tight instead and resumes weeping.  Foggy lets go of his growing rage and remembers what he’s supposed to be doing.  Remembers that he’s dealing with his best friend and not the Daredevil.  “You are so gifted, Matt, and yeah, great power does come with great responsibility.  But that doesn’t make you responsible for every person’s awful choice or everyone’s life for that matter.  You aren’t…” he almost says it.  Should he?  Is that really what Matt needs to hear?  The sound of his friend’s cries are undecided.  Foggy goes with his gut.  “You aren’t going to be able to save everyone, Matt.”  

            The sounds of Matt’s sobbing get louder, wetter.  Foggy isn’t sure whose tears he has on his face.  He’s been crying for a good while too.  Needing to make this better, as best as he possibly can, he adds, “ _Nobody_ can.  Nobody can save everyone.  Even the…the Avengers lose people, and they have so much power.  Way more power than-“ _don’t say ‘you’_ “-people.” 

Nice save there, Nelson.

            He doesn’t let his gaff hang in the air any longer than it has to: “The best we can do is we can try.  Isn’t that what you told me when we started this practice of ours?  What you keep telling me when I want money and fame and free bagels?  We try to save the world, and sometimes we do.”  
  
            Matt already has his argument worked out, “A boy died tonight, Foggy, and I could have stopped it.”  
  
            “A boy was murdered tonight by his uncle, and you couldn’t have stopped it.  So instead, you made sure that justice was served.  That the murdering bastard lives to see the inside of a jail cell.”

            “It’s not fair.” 

            “Hell no, it’s not fair, but neither is you blaming yourself,” Foggy gets his anger back under control.  He pats Matt on the back of the neck.  “You did the best you could.”

            “Wasn’t good enough.”  
  
            God damn it – he has a comeback for everything.  “Not tonight, not for this boy.  But next time, next time it might be.” That sounds awful: true, but awful.  Foggy fixes it so Matt can’t dwell on the worst case scenario.  “You’re not God, Matt.”

            Matt pries his head from Foggy suddenly, as if burned, “Where was God tonight?”

            Foggy starts putting the lid back on the philosophical can of worms he just opened, “Where is God anytime something bad happens?  Isn’t he supposed to be carrying you through?”

            “He’s the hand that holds the world and the hand that holds the knife,” Matt stammers bitterly. 

            “God didn’t kill that boy any more than you did and you know it.  You want there to be some reason that you couldn’t get there in time, and there is, but it’s not supernatural, it’s not right, it’s not fair, and it’s not your fault.”

            Matt goes from angry to sad again, resolved to wounded, and Foggy gets the sense he may have come on too strong.  Christ, he gets so territorial about guilt, as if he’s the only person entitled to it.  Orphaned, blinded, abandoned, and Catholic: guilt is the only thing Matt has ever had to call his own.  Foggy strips it out of his hot little hands and has nothing to replace it with but the uncertainty that next time he might get it right.  Possibly. 

            He might be the wrong person for this job, “Sure you don’t want me to call Father Lantom?”

            Matt shakes his head.  Errant tears fly off his cheeks.  No, he wouldn’t want another person to come and tell him this isn’t his fault.  Probably why he sent Claire on her way without an explanation too.  Matt surrounds himself with people who will absolve him and then denies himself – and them – his absolution. 

            “Want another beer?”  
  
            Head shaking again. 

            “Good,” Foggy sighs.  He picks up his bottle.  “I need this one.” 

            He’s not more than a drink in when his stomach churns.  Alcohol isn’t the answer tonight for him anymore than it is for Matt.  Foggy puts the bottle down, comes over to the couch.  “Come here,” he says, as if he’s giving Matt a choice. 

            Matt sidles over as if he doesn’t have one.

            Foggy wraps the lad up in his arms as tightly as he can.  Small comfort, if Matt’s growing sobs are any indication, but he can try.  It’s all he can do is try.    

 

* * *

 

Thank you for reading!


	21. ...Matt Gets Self-Destructive

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Matt tries his hand in self-destruction. Turns out, he's an amateur.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: the characters and concepts in this story are the property of Marvel and their related affiliates. This is an amateur writing effort meant for entertainment purposes only.
> 
> The new trailer for season 2. The one Netflix dropped today. 
> 
> Oh, my dear, sweet Lord. 
> 
> This chapter is a bit of a monster. Four drafts, then multiple revisions, but I knew this was the logical follow-up to the last chapter. I couldn’t write a happy-go-lucky fluff piece without addressing the fallout of Matt being too late. And I couldn’t address self-destructive tendencies without including Jessica Jones, a character I’ve wanted to include for a long time. Also, I have Malcolm make an appearance, because Malcolm is awesome and helpful when characters are having a rough time of it. Consequently, this chapter is Foggy-lite. 
> 
> I should also mention that this will likely be one of the last installments to this sprawling fic! In anticipation for the second season, I’ll be concluding this, as best I can. I have no intention of leaving the fandom though. I’m sure I’ll be back with more hurt Matt, especially since it looks like Frank Castle is going to get the ball rolling for me next season.  
> Readers, I could not have made it this far without your kind support. All those who have provided prompts can anticipate a slow slew of updates. I truly appreciate them, and you, for joining me so far. Please enjoy this chapter! Cheers!

* * *

 

…Matt Gets Self-Destructive

 

            The tastes of trash, piss, and asphalt do nothing for Matt’s headache, but he can’t get his face off the pavement.  It’s cool against his bloodied, swollen face and speaks to him with Foggy’s voice.  “Where are you?  Hey, hello?  Matt?”

            Breathing takes all of Matt’s focus and energy.  He moves his mouth in hopes the words will form themselves, but they don’t.  Blood coats his teeth.  Pain is everywhere, all at once, spiking and receding in a vicious game of whack-a-mole across his body.  All he manages is a garbled gasping sound, one that Foggy can’t hear judging on his incessant questioning. 

            Heavy footfalls drown out the sounds of Foggy’s questions a second later.

            “Jesus, I thought I was a fucking mess,” she comments dryly.  Her voice is a straight line, as deadpan as possible.  It doesn’t bounce on the walls; it swells, occupying the whole space at once, and throws Matt’s radar sense into a tizzy.  Meanwhile, the smell of cheap whiskey and unwashed clothes mingle with the usual alley fumes to finally make him retch.

            He catches the heat of her wrist across his face when she makes a mad grab in front of him.  She dodges the spew but makes a disgusted sound anyways.  Matt tries to apologize; he rotates his face into the pavement instead.  Listening closely he can hear the rubbery throb of swelling like an elastic stretching, stretching, bursting.  His own skull under his skin. 

            The woman hasn’t left.  “He’s going to have to call you back,” she says. 

            When he tries to disagree with her, Matt passes out. 

 

* * *

 

            Senses return in a confusing rush.  Training tells them to fall in line, but blood loss prevents them from doing so, causing smells to overlap with sounds to collide with touch.  His perception is a traffic jam.  He tastes body soil and low-grade flannel through his arms; sharp ringing zips through his jaw, down his side, into his ankles.  Perspiration and blood echoes as they trickle under his armour.

            Pain.  So much pain.  Everywhere, every kind of pain. 

            A cloud of stale liquor and leather tells him to stay still.  Matt didn’t realize he was moving, but the way she holds him makes the pain lessen somewhat. 

            “Listen, your ribs are broken, and you are bleeding everywhere.”  The pain crests into a spike and runs him clean through when he laughs, but Matt has to laugh.  She doesn’t know how right she is.  “I know someone, but she’s not answering my calls.  That guy you were phoning – is he a doctor?”  
            “No, no,” Matt says without remembering the phone call.  Or the alley.  Or much of anything.  He saves face by trying to rise from the bed.  “You’ve done enough.  I’ll go.  I’ll-“

            Something inside him, something deep and fragile, cracks open and fills his chest with an agony unlike anything Matt’s ever felt.  The breath is stolen from his lungs.  He is swallowed up by an inferno.  A child cries out for their mother with a scream that climbs out of his own mouth, a scream that crawled out of the now broken vessel inside him, the one he’s kept carefully locked and buried for a month. 

            The pain reaches its apex and everything is silent.  Everything is peaceful.

            Everything is wrong. 

* * *

 

            Matt comes to hot and shaking, head pinioned against the wall as his liquor-soaked saviour binds his chest with plastic wrap.  She’s doing such a good job that he can’t breathe, and she mistakes his struggling for stubbornness, “Hold still, would you?”

            His mouth flaps.  He taps out against her freakishly strong arm.  “Sorry,” she loosens the band of plastic wrap.  Air drops into his lungs causing his broken ribs to crackle.  Three of them by Matt’s count, and they all refuse to work without the careful support of the cling-wrap she’s applying.  She binds it all off with a few strips of electrical tape.

            The air in the room is thick from being lived-in.  Her apartment is old, maintained to code and no more, which Matt gets the sense fits this person fine.  She herself smells of the same musk and booze as his resting place does.  Without a concussion, he might hate it.  Being unable to focus, it’s not terrible.  His nausea remains at bay when he finally wets his throat enough to ask, “Who are you?”  
            “I’m the lucky lady who saved your fine ass from a massacre.  Better question is, who are you?”

            “The uh…” Hs are hard.  They require a lot of breath he doesn’t have.  “H-horns and body armour don’t give it away?”

            “Horns and body armour tell me you’re Daredevil.  The way you were getting your ass handed to you tonight tells me you’re some idiot in way over his head.” 

            “It can’t be both?” because tonight, it definitely is. 

            “It had better be,” because otherwise, Hell’s Kitchen is screwed.  “No way you’re the Daredevil.”

            “So why bring me to your apartment?  Why not just take me to the hospital?”  

            Her voice gives him something to focus on.  He feels it vibrating in his muscles like a rattlesnake, “Maniac in a mask playing seventh wheel in a Hell’s Kitchen turf war has enough problems without mental health getting involved.  Besides, you might actually be Daredevil, and I’m pretty sure there’s a special place in hell for people who unmask masked vigilantes.”  

            Matt can’t tell her how right she is, how right they both are.  This isn’t like him, definitely isn’t like the devil.  Most of the time, what looks like stupidity is a calculated risk, but tonight, he really did do the stupid thing.  Walking in on six guys gearing up for a brawl while employing as little stealth as possible is the definition of the word stupid, in fact.  Stick’s voice told him so then and keeps telling him so now. 

            “What were you doing there?” he wonders.  She strikes him as more of a calculated risk type. 

            She lies well with her voice, not so great with her heartbeat, “I wasn’t about to let you boys have all the fun.”

            He doesn’t remember her showing up, only remembers being face-down in the alley fumbling with his phone, head swimming and body aching and feeling all the better for feeling all the worse.  “This isn’t fun,” he points out.   
  
            “I was there on business,” she admits. 

            “What business?”

            “I’m a PI.  Client of mine was worried about her son, sent me to track him down.  Found him, stopped him from ripping out your kidneys, set him straight, saved your ass…” she sighs in perpetual dissatisfaction, “All in a night’s work.”

            “Thank you for saving my ass,” Matt forces himself to say.  He’s not ungrateful, just an idiot.  One big, swollen idiot.

            As if sensing his dissatisfaction, his rescuer keeps up her blunt repartee, “Fine ass like yours?  Believe me, the pleasure is all mine.”

            All sarcasm but not a hint of guile.  Matt cracks a genuine smirk – one of the rare few in the past month.  “Thank you…for that.”  
  
            “No, thank you,” she sasses, checking him out.  Hard to tell if she’s doing a bit or actually indulging in a look.  “Though I gotta say, putting your ass on the line like that?  Letting them kick the shit out of you?”  
  
            “I wasn’t letting them.”

            “You were letting them.”

            “I-“

            His broken ribs conspire to kill the comment before he can finish.  They shift; he groans.  She grabs his shoulder in a show of support, having been where he is.  That and her pulse is hammering at the thought of him lying.  “I know a thing or two about self-destruction to see it in other people.  You went in there looking to have your ass handed to you.”

            Matt wishes he could remember the fight at all to form a suitable argument against self-destruction.  He only has his body to go on, and a cursory examination tells him there were weapons?  There had to be in order to break ribs through his armour.  He also has a neat army of steri-strips holding the laceration on his abdomen together.  Small scratches itch on his neck and chin.  The bruises are the worst part though.  They pound, pound, pound alongside his pulse, quivering from the tendrils loping out of that dark place burrowed along his vertebrae. 

            As if she can hear him thinking, “That one guy was really laying into you with that tire iron.”

            He can’t figure out if he remembers a tire iron or another weapon.  Pain blurs into a collision course with the pavement…where she threw him.  God damn it: “Did you throw me through a window?”  
  
            “Don’t change the subject,” she bristles, offended he would say something like that, “But yeah, I did.”

            That explains the cut on his abdomen and the scrapes on his neck. 

            “You weren’t exactly giving me a lot of options.  I tore you away from one, you went back for more from someone else,” she waits for an explanation that Matt doesn’t provide.  He knows his reasons by heart, but they’re the sort that don’t sound good when spoken aloud.  “There are easier ways to get put in the ground.”  
  
            “Do I look like a guy who likes the easy way?”  
  
            She gives him another once over, unzipping his scars and bruises with her gaze so she can creep under his skin, “You look like a guy who knows better.”  
  
            “I thought I did,” Matt sighs.  A month ago, he probably would have bet his life on it.  “Now, I know I don’t.” 

            “So you let these guys kill you, then what?”  
  
            He scoffs, “I wasn’t looking to die.”  
  
            “Just get hurt.”

            There isn’t a comfortable lie, not for someone who knows him – who knows the situation – as well as she does.  She’s goaded plenty of people to take a pound of her flesh for things.  Matt sighs, “I let something happen that shouldn’t have.”  
  
            “I saw it on the news,” she doesn’t mention it by name, thank God.  “Rough night.”  
  
            The child-size boulder on his spine swells until his whole body is trying to break in two.  Matt’s chin quivers.  He holds it together, remembers who he is underneath, whose face he’s wearing, “Yeah.”  
  
            Her hands drops from his shoulder and her heart does a nervous dance inside her chest, then the words come out of her mouth and hang there on the air between them:  
  
            “Kids die.”  
  
            Matt searches for the devil inside only to find he’s being eaten by whatever hateful thing is growing inside his thoracic cavity.  He growls weakly, “They shouldn’t.”  
  
            “Lots of things shouldn’t happen and do.”  
  
            “Yeah, yeah, I get it: I can’t save everybody,” and getting hurt won’t bring the kid back any more than his dying will.  Thanks, Foggy Nelson. 

            She shrugs, work done, “Well, you now know one more thing that doesn’t make the undoable shit any better.”

            “Know any that work?”  
  
            “Drinking.  But that comes with its own problems.”  
  
            He releases one laugh – one – and the pressure in his chest loosens surprisingly.  They’re a sad pair, and the only remedy is to lament on their piss-poor coping mechanisms.  “Doesn’t everything.”  
  
            She’s about to agree when a phone rattles to life next to Matt’s head.  It’s his phone, the burner, and the way she blasphemes before answering tells Matt this isn’t the first time it’s gone off.  “Jesus, fuck!  He’s fucking alive, alright!” then she…pauses.  Because she’s doing something that Matt is supposed to be able to pick up on.  The air between them is fraught with expectations.  He finally lifts a leaden arm from the bed and finds her offering the phone to him. 

            Foggy is mid-diatribe, “…will tear you limb from limb using my bare hands!”

            “H-“ his lungs don’t give him the air to finish.  Matt changes consonant sounds for something easier to pronounce, “Yeah.”  
  
            “Oh, my God.  Oh, my God!  Oh, my God…” Foggy repeats the prayer a few more times breathlessly.  “You’re alive!”  
  
            “Yeah,” Matt agrees.  His head is swimming with relief and discomfort.  Being in contact with Foggy makes him uncomfortably aware of how disguised he is, cocooned in armour and blood.  “Yeah, I’m good.  Where are you?”  
  
            “Uh, where are you?  And who the hell are you with?”  
  
            “I’m good,” as if that answers both of Foggy’s questions instead of neither of them.  He is never going to hear the end of this as it is.  His rescuer slips off the bed because _awkward_.  Yet another kind of conversation she knows enough about to avoid when she can.  Matt finds his body armour lying on the bed next to him.  He pulls it over his chest, wincing as all of his injuries scream.  The kid he’s carrying around under his ribs is having a tantrum.  “I’m heading out.  See you soon.  Bring the…” moving steals the breath from his lungs.  Matt falls back against the headboard, trying not to cry out.  His brain is mistaking Foggy’s voice for safety.  He’s the devil.  Devils don’t cry.  Devils share their pain.  “Bring the stuff.  The kit.” 

            Foggy is impossible to read over the phone.  “Yeah, fine,” Matt hopes that means Foggy knows to come to his place.  “Fine, bye.” 

            Click. 

            “Need a hand?” his saviour offers from her place in the doorway.  Matt is about to turn her down when movement knocks the wind out of him again.  He sits up because he has to, and because concussion symptoms mollify the agony he should be in.  Pain can come later; motion comes now. 

            He really is a fucking mess. 

            She tears him back into the costume.  The armour hugs him so tightly it’s about to merge with his skin, and for the first time since he started on this fool’s errand to hurt his way out of inner turmoil, Matt admits this is about self-destruction.  He wants to raze his skin from his bones, unleash that devil living in his chest, and really put a stop to the criminal element in Hell’s Kitchen. 

            He wants absolution but not from guilt.  From humanity.  From morality. 

            And that scares Matt more than dying. 

            He waits on the bed for several long moments, testing his breath, his body.  Pops his phone back into its holster alongside his sticks.  In reality, his stricken.  Foggy often says that he can’t keep doing this, and Matt’s a master of testing his limits.  He hopes that he sees the line coming, this time, and stops himself from crossing it. 

            There’s a line of windows: Matt can hear the tinny rattle of glass in the old frames.  He rises and claims one as his exit, hoping he looks daring instead of plain stupid.

            “Hey,” she comes up next to him.  Again, the air between them swirls with movement.  Matt finds her hand waiting, a slip of paper gripped in her fingers.  “I have a friend: Malcolm.  Likes to listen to people.  Thinks it helps, and it might.  I wouldn’t know.” 

            “You don’t like to listen?”

            “I don’t like to talk,” she makes it sound like a threat.  You won’t like her when she talks.  “Anyways, he’s got experience with weirdos, freaks, and secret identities.  If drinking doesn’t work for you, you can always give him a call.”

            He takes the paper.  It crumples in his gloved hand, and the air smells like ballpoint pen, processed trees, and broken lines on a scrappy page.  Matt tucks it away in his belt and pretends their exchange never happened.

            “I never did get your name,” he says. 

            She scoffs, “Tell me yours, I’ll tell you mine.”  
  
            “Female PI in Hell’s Kitchen is a short list.  Even shorter for ones who can-“

            “Save your ass?”  
  
            “I was going to say throw me through a window.”  
  
            “Same difference,” she leans against the wall coolly.  There isn’t much harm in her giving him her name, not with all the information he already has and is about to have.  “My name is Jessica Jones.”  
  
            Shit.  Matt tries to hide his awe, “Thank you, Jessica, for saving my ass.”  
  
            “Yeah, yeah,” she’s half-pretending to be nonchalant.  Deep down, Matt can hear her pulse tick happily, tickled at being thanked.  Outwardly, she’s all pins and needles.  “Don’t let it happen again, Daredevil.  I’ve got enough people looking for me to save them without you putting your ass on the line.”  
  
            He nods, opening the window, “I’ll see what I can do.”

            Then he slips out into the night, with her leaving the window open behind him. 

* * *

 

            Finding home is easy.  It shouldn’t be, but he’s navigated the streets through blood and pain too many times to get turned around.  Jessica’s apartment windows gets him pointed in the right direction.  He takes a long way home, going as easy as he can on his broken body. 

            Foggy’s irritation makes Matt’s skin itch all over, or maybe that’s the thin lines of broken skin left by his flight through a window earlier.  He slips in through the loft door and descends into an apartment fraught with best-friend-worry.  To Foggy and bandages and the promise of a lecture when it’s clear he isn’t going to die.

            Matt drinks it all in without focusing.  He casts his sensory nets wide to catch the subtleties of Foggy’s pulse, the crackle of broken ribs as they sting satisfactorily under examination, getting changed into clean clothes, the descent into bed, into more pain, all over pain, everywhere pain.  Part of him had said goodbye to these mundane acts, the same part that floods his bloodstream with a pain no others can eclipse. 

            Everything is wrong and stays wrong until morning comes.  He wakes up groggy, sick, hurting: all the things that seemed like great cures for the kid curled up inside his chest, the one that can’t stop, won’t stop screaming.  He’s alive; the boy isn’t.  God isn’t fair, the world isn’t right, the devil isn’t just. 

            Foggy is in the kitchen being quiet.  Matt waits until he takes a break from vigil to take out the trash – a bag of bandages, bloody and sweaty – before he reaches to the night table.  His phone is there, along with the crumpled paper that smells like her.  Liquor, blood, and bad decisions: that’s what Jessica Jones is made of.

            He runs his fingers over it, wincing from the strain the motion places on his swollen body.  “You can’t keep doing this,” he needs to hear himself say it before he can read the number with his fingertips.  Jessica writes carelessly, but he pieces the number together and punches it into the phone. 

            Ringing.  Matt hopes he doesn’t answer.  Malcom disappoints him.  He’s half-asleep when he speaks, “Yeah?  Hello?  Hi?”

            Matt’s mouth goes dry.  The boulder in his chest is heavier somehow now, clinging for dear life.  It tells him to fall out bed, make those ribs of his prod into his lungs, stab the air from him.  The boy’s screams are cut short, held ransom by his brain.  They won’t return unless he hangs up.

            He doesn’t hang up.  Doesn’t roll off the bed.

            “Hello?”  Malcolm says again.  “Hey, I can hear you breathing.  If this is Jessica, I swear to God-“

            Matt cuts him off by saying, “Hello.”

 

* * *

 

Happy reading!  
           

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Special thanks to ouroboros-ontology for suggesting - a long time ago - that Matt needed someone to talk to! I owe the ending of this installment to that prompt!


	22. ...There's Some Explaining to Do

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The doctor comes out and says it: “He has a lot of scars. Like a lot of scars.” 
> 
> “Matt is clumsy. Like really clumsy,” Foggy doesn’t stop there. The more he says, the truer his lies become. That’s how lying works, right?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: the characters and concepts in this story are the property of Marvel and their related affiliates. This is an amateur writing effort meant for entertainment purposes only.
> 
> I’m pretty sure this is based on a prompt, but I can’t find the prompter! I must have missed you in the comments and reviews! Or maybe I made that up completely. If I didn’t, though, thank you for the idea! This was so much fun to write after all the emotional hurt/comfort of the previous couple of chapters. Thank you!
> 
> There’s some…mature content suggested at the end of this chapter. You've been warned.
> 
> I don’t have much to say about this one except for enjoy. I definitely did!

* * *

 

…There’s Some Explaining to Do

 

            The doctor is a petite redhead, brand new to the floor.  She still has that new doctor scent and that new doctor gaze, the slightly frenzied crinkling around her eyes telling Foggy that she needed to go home hours ago.  She doesn’t know why she’s still here.  Stockholm Syndrome is setting in.  She may never go home again.

            “He’s alright,” she says by way of a greeting.  “Your friend, I mean.  We set the bone in his arm.  The cast will have to stay on for about six weeks, but he should regain full mobility of the limb.  He also had some bruising on his ribs that we iced...and treated.”  She trails off because she can’t quite remember how, but Foggy isn’t asking.  “He’s resting now, so you should be able to take him home soon.”

            “Thank you, doctor.  Thank you,” Foggy says, relieved.  “Can I see him?”  
  
            “Absolutely.  That’d be great, yeah.  Um…” she is giving her next words very serious thought.  Her eyes flit to the charts in her hands.  She scratches the side of her head in a terrible attempt at nonchalance.  “Um…I have to ask.  You’re his friend, right?”

            “I’m his family,” Foggy states flatly.  He’s not sure what her anxiety is for, but he doesn’t like it.  “Is there something wrong?”

            She comes out and says it: “He has a lot of scars.  Like a lot of scars.”

            “Matt is clumsy.  Like really clumsy,” he doesn’t stop there.  The more he says, the truer his lies become.  That’s how lying works, right?  “He falls down stairs.  And manholes.  He walks into walls, doorways, me, you, everybody.  He also boxes.  Did I mention he boxes?  Because he boxes.  People!  He boxes people at the gym!  People who can see.  He can’t see.  Hence the being clumsy, falling, and walking into things.”  
  
            The doctor stares at him, clearly never having heard that many words in that short of time making that little sense.  Foggy can’t blame her.  He means to have strung the information together less suspiciously.  Damn it, he’s a lawyer.  Lying should be second nature to him.  The best he can offer by way of damage control is a smile, an uneasy, insincere grin that sends the doctor’s brow even higher. 

            “Boxing,” she tests the word in her mouth. 

            “Yes,” Foggy confirms.  “Boxing.  And falling.  I mentioned falling.”

            She nods slowly, eyebrows lowering to form a sympathetic, inverted V overtop of her eyes, “Onto…giant knives?  Falling onto giant knives?”  
  
            “Yes.”  Wait.  “No.  What?”  
  
            “He has a scar on his waist caused by what was probably a very large knife or a hook of some kind.” 

            Foggy nods: the souvenir from Nobu.  “Yes,” he cringes from delivering yet another wrong response and feigns confusion.  Easily done given how much he’s wincing from screwing up so badly, “I mean, he has a scar on his waist?”  
  
            “Yes.”  
  
            “From a knife?”  
  
            “Yes.”  
  
            “That doesn’t make sense,” and he quickly gets as indignant as possible that she would suggest such a ludicrous notion.  Foggy even forces himself to laugh at her, “You’re probably mistaken.  Are you…” his laughter dissolves into nervous silence.  This is a worse tactic than blaming Matt’s scars on clumsiness, “Are you sure you’re talking about Matt?”  
  
            The doctor points over her shoulder towards where Foggy saw them take his friend, “Tallish, lean, brown-haired, super-polite guy with a broken arm?”

            Her eyes are the size and shape of dinner plates: curious and a little saddened that he’s trying to pull one over on her.  She looks like a woodland animal whose habitat is being destroyed, and Foggy’s the man giving the orders.  He can’t tell her that’s not Matt, doesn’t want to try and tell her another lie, “Yeah, him.  H-h-him.”  
  
            “Him,” she agrees, nodding. 

            Foggy is drowning in her stare, in the words that insist on pouring out of his mouth.  Words that he’s using as quickly as he can think of them, “Maybe he got mugged and didn’t tell anyone…?”

            “He never mentioned almost being disemboweled?”

            “Matt’s a…a really private person.  Human Fort Knox, that guy.”  
  
            “I thought you said you were family.”  
  
            “I thought I said he was Human Fort Knox,” take that, responsible medical professional who is concerned about my best friend’s well-being.  Foggy folds his arms across his chest and puts on his serious-lawyer face.  “You said this was a scar?”

            “Yes, a very-“

            “So it’s healed?”  
  
            “Completely, but it’s-“  
  
            Foggy shrugs, hating himself, “Then it’s not a problem.  Probably looks worse than it was.”  
  
            The doctor nods dumbly, because she – like Foggy – knows it’s the opposite.  The scar looks better than the wound was.  “There are other scars.”  
  
            “Like that one?”  
  
            “No, no, different: some from knives, a few from what must have been broken glass.  When I was looking at his x-rays, I saw evidence of old injuries too.  A broken wrist-“

            “That was a car accident!  He was actually in a car accident!” Foggy snaps at the one wound he can explain honestly.  Then he realizes that makes all his other lies look fake, which they are, but he has to save face.  “Just like he was actually mugged or something by a knife-wielding psychopath.  Probably.”

            He wants to die.  He wants God to strike him down where he’s standing, vaporize every inch of him, so that he can escape before he makes this worse.  Why is it so hot in here?  It’s hell.  God has struck him down, and this is hell, and that’s why this conversation isn’t ending. 

            The doctor holds up a hand to signal the end of her fruitless line of questioning, at least with regards to the broken wrist.  “I’m also curious about his broken arm.  His chart says that he fell down the stairs.”  
  
            Finally, a lie he prepared, “Matt’s stairs are murderous.  They actively hunger for the taste of human blood.  I have long suspected that they are possessed by a vengeful spirit or a deceased serial killer.”

            “You were with him when he fell, then?”  
  
            Oh, crap!  What the hell did he tell the nurse?  Foggy nods to give the illusion of compliance and responds by saying, “…Matt’s stairs are evil.” 

            Despite that in no way answering her question, the doctor continues, “His break is inconsistent with a fall.”  
  
            Foggy tries a different tactic this time: fewer words, greater emphasis on every syllable.  “That’s not possible, because he fell down the murder stairs.”  He likes how calm it sounds, how certain, despite it being the bold-faced lie that the doctor suspects it is. 

            “So the murder stairs grabbed him by the arm-“

            He laughs, playing it so cool his performance goes all the way back to the verge of hysterics, “Stairs can’t grab people!” Silly doctor! 

            She glares at him accusingly, “So you grabbed him by the arm?”

            “What’s all this about grabbing arms?  Matt fell.  He fell down the stairs and landed on his arm.”  
  
            The doctor’s face scrunches into a discerning frown, “Yeah, no, somebody grabbed your friend’s arm, and it was either you, the murder stairs, or maybe the hypothetical mugger who actually tried to disembowel him probably.”

            Foggy stares.  He’s underestimated her, this new doctor, by banking on her tiredness to end the conversation early.  And really, he should have played the broken arm safer than the scars.  Older wounds are easily contestable, but the arm she recently had a hand in doctoring is different.  Foggy sets his mouth into a hard line, allowing himself a deep breath as he stands on the verge of defeat.  “I didn’t grab his arm.  I wouldn’t…I would never do that to him, ever.”  
  
            “Well, somebody did, just like somebody-“ she checks her chart for the note, “-knifed his torso to hell, stabbed him in the calf twice, and otherwise turned him into Frankenstein’s monster.”  
  
            “What you call charting, I call a lawsuit,” and Foggy would only be too happy to settle as far away from court as possible, because putting this doctor on the stand would be a mistake of epic proportions.  Talking to her like a normal person has already given him a new appreciation for dying.  Out of all the doctors in Hell’s Kitchen, he got one genuinely invested in Matt’s well-being.  Why that constitutes rotten luck is a testament to how messed up being friends with a costumed vigilante is.  Nevertheless, he’s only too happy to play a card that he can play competently: lawyer powers, activate!

            The doctor barely bristles.  She blinks slowly, exhaustedly, “That was one of our nurses, but I stand by her assessment.  Your friend appears to lead a very dangerous life, and however he broke his arm tonight seems to be a part of that.  Now I know that he didn’t fall down the stairs-“

            Foggy is already breaking, “You’re right, he didn’t fall down the stairs.”

            The doctor folds her hands over the chart in front of her, awaiting an explanation. 

            Me and my big mouth, Foggy laments, unfolding his arms as a kind of peace offering.  He, too, is exhausted.  It’s three o’clock in the morning.  Foggy has already dragged his broken-armed friend to the hospital, watched said-friend be so delirious from pain that he forgoes his usual escape attempt and accepts help.  Foggy has kept vigil in the waiting room, filled out all the necessary paperwork, come up with a lie, deflected questions.  He’s not the one who decided that beating the crap out of bad guys was the best way of saving Hell’s Kitchen!  He’s not the one who needs to be interrogated. 

            But damn it all to hell, he’s the one who answers his friend’s calls in the middle of the night.  He’s the one believes that supporting Matt was the best way of saving Hell’s Kitchen, and he still believes that, even if it’s getting him into trouble.

            “My friend does lead a dangerous life,” Foggy admits softly.  He relaxes into the comfort that comes with telling the truth.  “You’re absolutely right about that.”  
  
            The doctor nods once, twice, three times, and when that doesn’t prompt further explanation, “What sort of dangerous life does your friend lead?”  
  
            Foggy’s mouth goes dry.  He provides yet another generalization for her, “Matt leads a double life.  On the one hand, he’s this great lawyer: brilliant, polite, superhumanly handsome.”  She gives a small, almost imperceptible nod that matches Foggy’s.  Yes, she noticed that too.  “He really is clumsy as hell as a lawyer too,” he isn’t lying about that.  Or maybe he is.  Strange – Foggy’s never thought about how many old injuries were Daredevil related before…

            “On the other hand,” Foggy abandons the thought, “Matt’s also-“

* * *

 

            The hallway to Matt’s bed is all but vacated.  Foggy’s footsteps echo into the deep, dark recesses of Metro-General.  They find empty beds and curl up into them, because it’s almost sunrise.  It’s almost sunrise and he has to be at work soon.  The practice needs one lawyer there in order to be called a practice, even if the one lawyer there can’t do what all good lawyers do and lie. 

            He’s a disgrace.  They should disbar him.  He’s not sure how he graduated without a professor taking him aside to beat him upside the head until the brain damage made him a compulsive unsooth-sayer. 

            The fact that his vigilante friend should probably stop being a vigilante occurs to him, but Foggy’s too tired to rage about it.  Besides, he dropped the ball tonight big time.  He should have spent more time getting to see Matt and less time dealing with the doctor’s questions. 

            Matt is the first in a row of beds in the wing.  The curtains are drawn to give him privacy, and Foggy worries that he’s going to open them to reveal Matt has disappeared.  He’s astounded when he finds Matt sitting upright in the bed, broken arm draped on his lap, discarded ice pack cuddled up to his thigh.  There’s a thin layer of sweat covering Matt’s pasty face, but he looks calm all things considered.  He isn’t crawling away, crying, and having a massive panic attack.  Matt only perks into action-mode when Foggy enters because he senses something is amiss, “What is it?”  
  
            Foggy drops into the chair next to the bed and shoves his face into the mattress.  He moans an apology.

            “My hearing isn’t that good, Foggy,” Matt replies.

            He tilts his head so he can speak, “How are you still here?  How have you managed to hold it together better than me tonight?” 

            Matt’s chuckle hits the perfect blend of sadness and obliviousness, “Demerol is a hellofuh drug.” Foggy scoffs him.  Matt continues, “Plus it’s hard to scale buildings with one arm.”  
  
            “There it is…” the actual reason Matt is here. 

            “Can I go home?”

            “Yes, yes, but before that happens,” Foggy leaves his head on the mattress, “I have to tell you something.  Before the Demerol wears off.” 

            “You could read me _War and Peace_ before the Demerol wears off,” he blinks lethargically as if to prove a point.

            “This won’t take that long.  I told the doctor something.”  
  
            “What did you tell the doctor?”  
  
            “She was asking questions about your scars.  I panicked, Matt!  I didn’t know what to say!”

            Matt blinks, freeing himself temporarily from the Demerol haze, “Did you…did you tell her about…?”

            Foggy shoves his face back into the mattress.

            “You didn’t,” Matt decides.

            “No, worse.  Worse.  I did worse.  So much worse.  Lying to Karen about the masked man in the alley worse.  I told her you were into-“  
  
            The mattress muffles his terrible, terrible lie.  Matt tilts his head slowly towards where Foggy is lying, “I understood none of that.”  
  
            “ _Fifty Shades_!” 

            Matt doesn’t get it, “The book?”  
  
            Foggy’s voice tightens to a pitch just above a whisper, “The reference - I told her you were into extreme BDSM!  I told her you made Anastacia Steele look like a lightweight!  I told her Nobu was the dom who tried to disembowel you for sexy reasons because you’re into knife-play!”

            Matt’s eyes go wide in shock, “And she believed you?”  
  
            “Not completely, but she believed it more than the alternatives I gave her!”   

            He is really not getting it:  “You told her-“

            “That you had your arm broken in a sex dungeon!”  
  
            “We agreed that the murder stairs did it,” Matt breathes.  His face twists to navigate the ins-and-outs of what’s been said,

            “Apparently the murder stairs don’t break arms the way your dom did it,” Foggy admits.   
  
            “I don’t have a dom,” Matt states flatly, with all the revulsion a good Catholic boy can muster. 

            “You do now,” Foggy lifts his head at long last, commiserating in mutual shame.  “I’m sorry!  I was freaking out!”

            “I’m freaking out,” Matt agrees. 

            “I’m sorry!”  
  
            Matt sits in stunned silence.  He is sorry too.  Sorry and druggy and no longer holding it together.  “I want to go home,” he finally says, nodding shakily.  “I’m going home.  I’m going home now.”  
  
            “I’ll get your doctor,” Foggy rises. 

            “No,” Matt drops off the bed, bracing himself as he relearns how to stand.  “No, I think you’ve said enough to her for...ever.  I’m going to climb out a window.  Maybe…maybe fall to my death while I’m at it.”    

            Foggy takes him by the arm, “I’ll join you!”

            They flee together. 

 

* * *

 

Happy reading!


	23. ...of Nightmares

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Face-touching to the rescue.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: the characters and concepts in this story are the property of Marvel and their related affiliates. This is an amateur writing effort meant for entertainment purposes only.
> 
> Special thanks to Bre Jameson on fanfic dot net for requesting the face-touching scene between Matt and Foggy in college. I hope you find this adorkable and awkward and funny!
> 
> At one point in this installment, Foggy alludes to Matt having been 'maggotted'. This is a reference to another fic I wrote called _We Were Both Disappointed_ , where Matt's wounds are infected and maggots get involved. 
> 
> Readers, I think I’m going to be concluding this fic within the next two installments, so I will save my bigger thanks for then. But thank you all, now, for your kind support. I really hope you like this! Cheers!

* * *

 

…of Nightmares

 

            Foggy calls the face-touching story a long story, but in truth, like so many of his and Matt’s stories, it’s actually quite short.  A hottie made some awful remark about Foggy’s appearance on their way out of class one night.  Back at the dorm, Matt tried to reassure him that it wasn’t true, and Foggy took the liberty of saying that Matt had no idea what he was talking about, because, quote, “Dude, you’re blind.”  Then, because Matt continued to be polite and loving and generally _Matt_ about the whole fucking thing, “You don’t believe me?  Bring it on, Murdock.  Give my fat, ugly mug a feel.”  
  
            Okay, so with the exception of practicality, like finding his way around campus or requiring balance after a night of hard drinking, Matt had never touched Foggy.  Sure, Foggy touched him: a pat on the shoulder, a tap on the knee, a swipe on the back of the head.  But Matt wasn’t a touchy guy, in part, Foggy assumed, because of his blindness, but mostly because Matt wasn’t built that way.  He was self-contained, that Matt Murdock, letting Foggy give him an affectionate rub on the arm every now and again but never initiating that kind of contact himself.

            So the triple-dog dare to not only touch his friend but do so in a way that 1) was super-duper intimate and 2) was for the sole purpose of touching made Matt pause for a long time.  He laughed nervously, “I don’t touch people’s faces, Foggy.”  
  
            “Because you’re afraid they’re really ugly?”  
  
            Matt’s million dollar smile lit up the whole room, belying his growing anxiety, “Face-touching is something they do in movies.  It doesn’t…”

            Foggy saw his argument coming from a mile away, “Doesn’t tell you what a person looks like?”  Matt tried to interject; Foggy cut him off, “So even if you did touch my face, you wouldn’t be able to figure out if I was ugly.  I understand.”

            “You’re not ugly.”  
   
           “I don’t think you’re qualified to make that assessment,” Foggy insisted smugly.  If he couldn’t be pretty, he could at least be right.

            Not one to lose an argument, however, Matt rose from his bed and made a careful walk across the room toward Foggy.  He caught the edge of the bed with his knee and almost face-planted into the floor.  “What are you-” Foggy closed the distance between them and caught one of Matt’s hands on his arm.

            Matt’s other hand jabbed him straight in the eye. 

            “OW!  MATT!”  
  
            “Sorry.”

            It didn’t really hurt as much as he let on, but being called ugly by someone who’s not (followed by being called not-ugly from someone who’s also not) made the wound smart, “Now I’m ugly and have no depth perception!”  Matt chuckled breathlessly, righting himself in front of Foggy.  Then Foggy took the liberty of nabbing Matt’s hand and held it gently over his cheek.  “There.  Watch out for my other eye.” 

            Matt hesitated, it finally having occurred to him that he was standing chest-to-chest with Foggy, almost nose-to-chin.  The kind of proximity that registered for the sort of kid who had never been hugged enough or struck too much.  Foggy was never more thankful that Matt was wearing his glasses than that moment, since the addition of a stare would cause his own dedication to waver.  Matt, mercifully, had his head cocked slightly to the side, exposing his ear as if to hear Foggy’s appearance.

            He slipped his hand towards Foggy’s own ear first, fingertips trembling over lengths of unkempt blonde hair.  His palm made contact with Foggy’s cheek next, then smoothed towards his nose.  Matt dragged his thumb lightly across brow hairs and eyelashes before sliding down to wrap around Foggy’s chin. 

            The other side of the face was much less cursory.  Armed now with the contours of the right side, Matt analyzed the features on the left with less caution.  He even drew his other hand up and proceeded to read Foggy like one of the pages in his braille books, fingers fanning out and away and in again.  Line by line, feature by feature, and when Matt’s hands finally fell away, Foggy found they were staring directly at one another and that Matt wasn’t shaking at all.

            Foggy, on the other hand, had an itch clawing at his bones all over his body.  He had felt seen by Matt before through the lad’s other senses, but this was vulnerability of a different breed.  Despite Matt’s near-admission that he couldn’t reconstruct faces, there was no doubt that he had written Foggy into his brain.  He had drawn the curvature of Foggy’s cheeks, the bulge of his chin, his lashes, his unwashed hair, _everything_ into his brain for safekeeping. 

            His breaking the silence with, “You’re not ugly,” didn’t help matters, especially when he added, “Eyelashes for days and dimples cut from marble.”  
  
            “And if I were a seven-year-old, I could make a living modelling _Spider-Man_ pyjamas,” Foggy scoffed, “but as a grown-ass adult-“

            Matt gave up, finally taking that step back he wanted to since they started this awkward enterprise, “Maybe she didn’t see your face through all that gorgeous hair of yours.”  
            “Oh, don’t you start on my hair!  It is all I have going for me with my ugly man-child face!”

            “You’re not ugly, Foggy,” Matt fumbled to take a seat on Foggy’s bed amidst his books, blanket, and satchel.  When he was finally settled, he added, “Man-child, though…”  
  
            Foggy took the liberty of touching Matt’s face then: with a pillow.  That he threw.  

* * *

                       The face-touching story gets buried deep in the Vault of Friendship afterwards, to be joined years later by Matt’s secret identity and his many near-death experiences.  Aside for bringing it up once with Karen, Foggy lets it lie.  He sees no use in analyzing what lingers in his – and he’s sure Matt’s – memory as an awkward experience of feeling raw and known and exposed. 

            Besides, he and Matt have had their fair-share of touching far more intimate since, what with Matt needing to be carried, undressed, cleaned-up, hugged, stitched, bandaged, _maggotted_ – frankly, face-touching is the least-awkward touching they’ve done in a lo-ong time. 

            Still, it’s not the first thing Foggy thinks as a remedy for when he’s pulling a night-watch at Matt’s place.  It’s not even the last thing.  More often than not, Foggy relies on pats to the shoulder or the knee, soft touches on hands, or a wrist across Matt’s brow; the sorts of touches he’s perfected over the years.  With the exception of the Night They Shall Not Speak Of Ever ~~Where Matt Was Too Late~~ , those touches are usually enough when maintaining a bedside vigil with Matt Murdock.

            Tonight, however, is not going to be one of those nights. 

            Tonight, Matt Murdock is going to have a number done on his head by a guy with a studded baseball bat.  The lenses in his suit are going to shatter, and his mask is going to get redrawn with tears, blood, and shards of body armour.  He’s going to struggle to form a sentence on the phone with Foggy, one that needn’t mention Claire being at work.  He’s going to let Foggy pick at his face for over an hour with tweezers, a needle, and a flashlight.  He’s going to kindly ask Foggy not to let one of his eyes pop no matter how many times Foggy tells him that isn’t how eyes work.  He’s going to have his eyes covered with cotton pads and lightly bandaged to staunch the bleeding.  Then he’s going to crawl into bed, face stinging with fresh cuts, and meditate himself to sleep while Foggy crashes on the couch. 

             And then he’s going to wake up screaming and crying about not being able to see. 

            Truthfully, everything up until the nightmare fits Foggy’s expectations of a slumber party at Matt’s place.  Hell, even nightmares aren’t an uncommon occurrence.  But the words coming out of Matt’s mouth don’t belong in the present.  They’re a part of a past Foggy is only beginning to have access to, so he leaps off the couch and rushes to Matt’s bedside. 

            He has a couple of standard prayers for Matt: “Wake up, Matt: it’s me”, “Matt, you’re having a nightmare”, or, when he’s particular stupefied by sleep deprivation, “Matt!  Matty!  Matt Murdock!  Matthew!”  A garbled mess of all three emerges from his mouth as he employs a battery of touches to keep the lad from scrubbing his mangled face.

             Matt scrambles for purchase in time and space.  The sheets knot around his ankles.  “I can’t see,” he reaches for his bandaged eyes.  “Dad, I can’t see.  I can’t see.”  
  
            “Matt, it’s not Dad, it’s Foggy.  It’s…”

            “I can’t see!”

            “I know, I know!” Foggy can’t get him to stop poking at the dressings on his eyes, and he has to.  He’s having visions of one of Matt’s eyeballs popping, despite being fairly confident that isn’t possible.  When he manages to tear one hand away, Foggy barely manages to hold it.  Matt is still in the throes of sleep, grunting and whimpering, “I can’t see,” as well as, “Everything is so loud.”  
  
            Foggy shoves Matt’s hand against his face, “Hey.  Hey, Matt, feel my face.  Feel my face!  It’s not Dad – it’s me.  It’s Foggy.  Remember?  Come on, get lost in my dimples and man-childish charm.  Come on.”  
  
            Matt gasps as if shocked with cold water.  His free hand falls away from his face.  He keeps kicking, seeking purchase, some additional evidence that he is _here_ wherever that is, but he finds Foggy’s face and, more specifically, Foggy’s eye like an eye-seeking missile from hell. 

            “God damn it, Matt,” it is a fucking miracle they both aren’t blind.  Foggy adjusts Matt’s grip so that his hands are touching cheeks instead of eyeball.  “It’s Foggy.  Hey, buddy, I’m here.  I’m here, it’s me.”  
  
            Gradually, Matt gets himself back under control.  His breathing goes from a steady buzz to guttural huffs.  “F-f-foggy,” he finally says, shaking all over.  Perspiration drains out of his pores, giving his skin a gray-blue sheen.  His hands slip down to Foggy’s chin and he says his friend’s name again, stuttering more from chills. 

            Foggy fumbles for the blankets, drawing them up and over Matt as his face is freed.  Weirdly, Matt accepts the help, knowing full well he isn’t capable of coordinated movements.  The blankets come up to his shoulders and he hugs them into place.  They ripple from his persistent shivers.   
  
            “Sorry,” he says.  “Sorry, what time is it?”  
  
            The apology isn’t for not-knowing the time.  “A little after four,” Foggy replies.  “You okay?  You okay or do you wanna…do you wanna talk about what just happened?”  When you called me Dad and discovered that you couldn’t see?

            “I thought I was somewhere else.”

            “And some-time else,” Foggy notes.

            “Yeah,” Matt agrees.  His shivers haven’t dissipated.  “Yeah, some-time.”         

            “Was it the accident?”

            Matt nods, unable to get his mouth to form the words, “After the accident.  I haven’t…I haven’t dreamt about that in a long time.  Thanks, Foggy.  Thank you.”

            Foggy leans back slightly on the bed, “You’re welcome, I think?  You still don’t look so good, buddy.”  
  
            “No, but…but you’re here.  You’re here, and that’s…” he substitutes silence for the myriad of words he can’t say: you’re here, and that’s nice, that’s helpful, that’s comforting.  Foggy understands.  “Thank you.”  
  
            “You’re welcome,” he replies.  “Can I do one more thing?”

            Matt shrugs.  Foggy cozies on up to Matt’s side, back propped against the wall.  The touch stops Matt’s shivering for a brief moment before it kicks back up, though the proximity provides him with the necessary heat to settle.

            His shivering eventually stops, and Foggy sighs with relief.  “You let me know when you want me back on the couch,” he says. 

            Matt mumbles something.  When Foggy looks, his head is hanging loosely from his neck, crooked at an odd angle from falling asleep without shuffling back to horizontal.

            Foggy adjusts him till he’s lying down again, checks the blankets and the bandages, and then heads back to the couch.

 

* * *

 

            Touching Matt’s face remains a clinical procedure, one Foggy doesn’t linger on.  He unties the knot and gently peels the bandages from around Matt’s head.  The cotton pads are stuck to a few of the longer, deeper scrapes lining his face.  A little saline lets Foggy pull them free without reopening the wounds.

            He looks at the criss-crossing scratches on his friend’s face, the steri-stripped laceration on his cheek.  Swelling makes Matt’s face puffy, bloated, distorting his perfectly proportioned features.  Foggy can’t help but shudder at how dangerously close Matt came to losing his pretty mug. 

            Matt only picks up on the silence, “What is it?”

            Foggy can’t help himself.  He lets himself sing, “For the first time in forever, I’m prettier than you!  For the first time in forever, you…look like a shoe…” his parody of the song starts to decline, “…that got beat…with a baseball bat…I’m sorry.  That was mean.”

            Matt laughs, not at all taking offence, “You were always prettier than me.”  Tears eek out of the corners of his eyes from pain or irritation or both.  He wipes them away.  “You know, for a man child.”  
  
            Foggy takes the liberty of touching Matt’s face again: with the bloodied dressings.  Which he throws. 

 

* * *

 

The song Foggy parodies at the end of this is "For the First Time in Forever" from  _Frozen_.  

Happy reading!

 


	24. ...of Punishment

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If he knew tonight was the night, Matt would tell Foggy Nelson he loves him. He loves him and he’s sorry. 
> 
> Strange how the option to not go out as Daredevil never crosses his mind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: the characters and concepts in this story are the property of Marvel and their related affiliates. This is an amateur writing effort meant for entertainment purposes only.
> 
> Tonight’s the night. I am prepped and ready for a day of work, than a quick return home to season two in the afternoon. Pumped does not begin to describe me. 
> 
> There will be a short epilogue for this fic posted over the weekend, but I think this closes off the fic well and sets everybody up for season two. I am working off the promotional images and trailer footage for this one. The Punisher is mentioned, not by name. Mostly, it’s a chance for angst. 
> 
> Readers, I say this every time I post and I will continue to do so: I cannot thank you enough for your kind, generous, and wonderful support during the hiatus. It’s a real privilege to be a part of this fandom, and an even greater joy to give something back. I have loved every chance I’ve had to post for you; thank you for being out there. Thank you for the support. Thank you. 
> 
> Enjoy!

* * *

 

…of Punishment

 

            It’s bad, so bad Claire doesn’t warn him about her movements.  She rolls the costume down to expose his shoulders and digs a needle into his bloody arm.  “Nah,” Matt tells her, already slipping away.  He hangs onto consciousness to hear both her and Foggy says, “Shut up,” before the drugs drag him down, down, down. 

            The floor in his apartment makes for a poor operating room.  Matt might not feel the bullets being pried from his skin or the stitches Claire weaves into his cuts, but the bite of hardwood into his shoulder blades registers.  They’re rolling the costume down inch by inch to prevent him from bleeding out, a decision they reach through mutual _Peanuts_ style warbling.  This dance makes less sense now that they’ve both learned to tango.  Usually, it’s Claire calling the shots, but Foggy has enough experience in Saving Matt’s Life to participate in the argument. 

            Matt diffuses, teetering on a fuzzy edge to oblivion, yet he comes back to his apartment floor without fail, and with that comes voices.  Motion.  The costume reaching his lower back.  Foggy applying ice to his ribs and wrapping his wrist.  “Don’t you die on me, Murdock,” he snarls in preparation for the reaper.  Matt can’t say it’ll be alright, can’t grip Foggy’s hand, can’t figure out where he’s headed.  The oblivion kissing his cheeks is just as likely death as it is sleep, and the way Claire tugs gruffly on his sutures or Foggy prods for his pulse is worrisome.  Maybe this is the end.  Maybe this is the last time he lies bleeding.  Maybe this is the night that all Claire’s horses and all Foggy’s men can’t put the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen together again.

            Pants off and chill finds him.  Bones rattle loosely under his skin.  “Get him a blanket,” Claire says, and Foggy disappears.  The empty air he leaves behind is colder.  Matt moans as his shaking sets off all the pains the drugs are masking.  He is a million tiny agonies.  The blanket scatters him across the floor: head in the corner, limbs up against the walls, torso held under Claire’s desperate touch, her shaking needle.  Foggy checking his pulse some more, “Don’t you die on us, Murdock.  Don’t you dare die on us now.  Or ever.  Don’t you dare die on us _ever_.  God damn it.”

            “He’s not going to check out because you used the wrong preposition.”

            “He’s not going to check out at all,” Foggy says as much to Matt as to Claire.  He has every intention, by the sounds of things, of kicking the ever-living shit out of whatever personification of death might come to take his friend.  Good thing too, since Matt can’t see.  His perception is skewed by the fuzzy cloud of Nothing billowing harder on his skin, the one he thinks might be death come a-calling. 

            Matt has thought about dying in abstraction: Being Here vs. Not Being Here.  The absence he’ll leave behind in the world.  Foggy and Karen and Claire.  Whether it’ll happen as the Devil or as Matt.  He thinks about his Catholic funeral, taking his place in the ground next to Dad.  His brain skips over the part of actually dying, the bridge between his apartment to a hole in the ground.  Not because he assumed he’d die instantly (though with the number of bullets fired at him lately, that’s possible): more because he doesn’t want to think about Foggy clutching his hand, begging him to stay with them.  Stay with me. 

            Don’t you die on me, Murdock.

            If he knew this was going to be it, that the Skull-shirted menace with an assault rifle would chain him to a rooftop, that they’d do war for the city, that there’d be bullets and blood and mayhem; that the night would end with Foggy pleading desperately for him to hold on against the unknown, Matt would have done things differently.  He would have gone out for one more night of drinks with Karen.  He would have had one more latte with Lantom.  He would have told Foggy….he would have told Foggy.  Told him all those things that Foggy doesn’t believe about himself: that he’s a better lawyer than he thinks, a better friend than Matt deserves.  That the world is a better place for him having been in it, and how if there’s one consolation prize to dying, it’s knowing that Hell’s Kitchen is in good hands. 

            If he knew tonight was the night, Matt would tell Foggy Nelson he loves him.  He loves him and he’s sorry. 

            Strange how the option to not go out as Daredevil never crosses his mind. 

 

* * *

 

            Dad’s face is cold under his fingertips, but it’s the darkness that tells Matt he’s alive.  Heaven or hell, he should get his sight back as a dead man. 

* * *

 

            Pain wakes him, as it so often does, mobilizing under his skin in calculated attacks.  An explosion here, gunfire there, punches everywhere.  The gritty taste of concrete combined with his chipped molars; swollen cheek, burst blood vessels throbbing in his right eyeball.  Knuckles grumbling about the nights before: let me back at him.  We’ll get him this time.  They’re not thinking about the splinted wrist or his leaden limbs; his dry mouth and throat, pounding headache, or healing bullet wounds dotting his shoulder (flesh wounds, knitted, but that makes them itch as well as hurt). 

            Blankets up to his shoulders, stippling his bruises as they track down to his sternum.  Ribs bruised and broken hissing GOD DAMN IT, MURDOCK in Stick’s voice.  I FUCKING TAUGHT YOU FUCKING BETTER THAN FUCKING THIS. 

            “I’m sorry,” he croaks.  Not to Stick, who is brewing up for another good yell inside Matt’s subconscious.  To Foggy, who sits vigil at his bedside, smelling of Matt’s shampoo and utter desolation.  Apparently, he’s been doing some thinking about death too. 

            “Not your fault,” Foggy replies flatly.

            “Yeah, it is.” 

            Foggy’s neck cracks as his head bobs, “Yeah, it is a little.”

            “Takes two to fight.” 

            “This wasn’t a fight.  This was attempted murder: really good attempted murder.” 

            Matt huffs, closest approximation of a laugh in his current condition, “Yeah, but he’s really good at murder.” 

            “So why’d you do it?  Why’d you go after him?”

            The question has a few fantastic answers that stand the test of Matt’s many injuries, most notable among them being the fact that this guy is blowing his city to pieces.  _He is killing people_.  That's the sort of man the devil should go after.  So really, a better question is, “Why wouldn’t I go after him?” 

            “You saw what this guy can do,” Foggy declares.  “You’ve seen what he’s done, all the people he’s killed, the buildings he’s blown up, and you went and picked a fight with him.  Why?” 

            Anger makes a fist of Foggy’s voice and the words roll off his tongue like so many more punches.  Matt clutches at the blanket, quivering with fear, with anticipation.  He has heard this righteous anger before and thought it was behind them.  Hearing it in the present is a painful reminder than no matter how far they go, they are still right there, on the edge of an oblivion Matt doesn’t want to face alone, “It’s what I do, Foggy.” 

            “That’s crap.” 

            “What do you want from me, Foggy?”

            “Gah, I don’t know!” Foggy gets up from his chair and storms across the bedroom, stomping as he goes.  Matt raises a hand from under the blanket to silently urge him to stop.  The vibrations hurt.  They clutch his heart like aftershocks from an explosion.  His mind fills with final thoughts – one more drink with Karen, one more latte with Lantom, one more minute with Foggy to tell him, tell him, _tell him_.  “I believe in you, Matt.  I believe you’re doing the right thing.”

            “We knew this might happen.  We knew…we knew this had its risks.”

            “I know.  I fucking know, Matt,” in a tone that only a man who has held his dying friend’s hand can have.  “But you’re not some guy in pyjamas anymore!  And this isn’t some ninja psycho or criminal kingpin!  This is some ex-military guy blowing up the city!” 

            “Yeah,” Matt swallows.  The taste of blood leaves a curdled taste in the back of his throat.  “But that’s why I have to stop him.” 

            Foggy scoffs him, “What if you can’t?  This guy…he did a number of you like you wouldn’t believe, Matt.”

            Matt’s turn to scoff.  Foggy forgets that he can taste bruised kidneys and smell broken ribs; that if he concentrates really hard, the chemical fog parts and reveals torn fibres scraping against one another individually.  And if he gets tired of the present moment, Matt’s spectacular memory can conjure flashbacks of the injuries happening.  Of being beaten mercilessly within scant inches of his life.  “I think I would.”

            “I thought I’d lost you.”

            “I thought I’d lost you too,” is what he wants to say but doesn’t.  Can’t.  God damn it.  Matt swallows hard and manages a lame, “ Yeah.”  Because that covers it. 

            Foggy reacts about as well as can be expected.  His heart leaps into his throat, hammering away in rage, “I’m serious.” 

            “I know, Foggy,” and he’s trying to be, really, “but do we have to...have to do this now?”  He takes advantage of Foggy winding up for another fight to add, pathetically, “Please, Foggy.  Please, I can’t fight.” 

            “I thought that’s all you could do.” 

            “That’s not fair.”

            “Isn’t it?”

            Matt’s lower lip quivers.  Sadness overwhelms him from the jumble of words in his throat, the uncomfortable blackness in front of his eyes reminding him how close he came to a comforting blackness of oblivion.  “I can’t…I can’t…I can’t wipe my fucking tears.”

            The sentence is supposed to have ended differently, but Matt is too busy failing miserably at manliness.  He digs his face into the blanket, which ratchets the pain up in his bruises to levels that the painkillers can’t manage.  Which causes more tears and embarrassment and he wants to say all those things to Foggy and there’s nothing sadder than not being able to say what he has to before he dies.

            Foggy tromps back to the bed and dabs at Matt’s cheeks with leftover gauze from the nightstand.  “You’re going to rip your stitches,” he sighs. 

            The words spill out of Matt’s mouth in a whispered rush.  Foggy stops poking at his bruises.  “I know, I know, you can’t do this now,” eyes rolling in his skull. 

            Matt breathes, “I can’t do this without you.”

            “I mentioned the number this guy did on you,” Foggy resumes wiping his face.

            “No,” he shirks the next swipe because OW.  “No, I can’t do _this_ without you.”

            Foggy sighs, “That’s not exactly a compliment with you almost dying.” 

            “I’m not complimenting you.  I’m being honest with you.  I can’t do this without you.” 

            The wheels in his friend’s head are churning, “So if I leave, you’ll stop.” 

            Matt’s turn to sigh.  Deeply.  “I’ll have to: I’ll be dead.” 

            “I can’t believe this: it’s like you’ve got a list of Worst Things to Say to Your Best Friend After a Near-Death Experience.” 

            “That’s not what I was compiling a list of.”

            “Oh, what was it then?  Body Parts That Aren’t Injured?  That’s a short list.” 

            _Tell him_.

            “I was thinking of all the things I would do if I knew it was going to be the last time I would do them.” 

            “Emotionally blackmailing me made the cut?” 

            More tears.  Tears everywhere.  Foggy shushes him and dabs at his bloated face some more.  The gauze is tear soaked already that all Foggy manages to do is draw wet, salty circles over cuts and bruises.  Matt chokes and splutters, mind a flurry of emotions run rampant.  Floodgates open and pouring.  The words surge out of him in a garbled mess until his breath runs out, and he spends the last of it telling Foggy.  Telling him.

            The heartbeat near his catches, pulsing, then slows to a crawl alongside Matt’s own.  The gauze drops from his cheek so that Foggy can grip his shoulder.  “I love you too,” Foggy says sadly, tears draining out of his eyes.  “I love you too, and I don’t…I don’t want you to die, Matt.  I don’t want you to die!” 

            “I don’t want to die either, Foggy…”

            “Then why?  Why did you do it?”

            “Because I don’t want you or Karen or anyone else in this city to die more,” Matt states, at long last putting words what compelled him to put on his suit in the first place, and what made not putting it on to fight this guy not an option.  The Matt-shaped absence he leaves behind will be worth it so long as the people he loves are safe.

            Foggy takes several deep breaths.  It’s all good fun when he’s lying to doctors or staging sleepovers, when he’s providing described video during movie marathons to entertain a bedridden Matt after a bad night.  The scourging of Hell’s Kitchen by this new killer vigilante has made what Matt does all too real, has made Matt all too mortal.  Neither of those are fun.  “I don’t know if I can do this for you,” he admits. 

            “I know I can’t ask you to,” Matt concedes. 

            He waits for Foggy to say that he’ll try; the moment never comes.  Instead, what Foggy does is take Matt’s hand in his and hold it: soft enough to not cause pain, but tight enough to show that he is not letting go. 

            Not today, at least.

 

* * *

 

Happy reading!  And happy season 2!


	25. ...It's Not Over

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It’s been a while since the devil came calling. Long enough that Foggy Nelson isn’t sure what he’s going to do when it happens.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: the characters and concepts in this story are the property of Marvel and their related affiliates. This is an amateur writing effort meant for entertainment purposes only.
> 
> I debated how this fic should end for a while before committing anything to paper. Part of me wanted to ignore the second season, write something happy and funny from Matt’s perspective that framed the story perfectly with the first chapter. Another part of me was stuck on the trajectory of season two, and inevitably, that’s the part that won out. 
> 
> Once written, I was then stuck between a happy ending and a tragically ambiguous one, an internal debate that was settled by the incomparable MomentumDeferred (thank you!). 
> 
> This installment is set post-season two, so major spoilers ahead if you haven’t seen it yet. I know that makes two of the installments in this fic blatantly AU (I’m looking at you, “…of Evil Ex-Girlfriends” and “Of Punishment”), but I wrote around those while producing this chapter. I pretended they didn’t happen in this chapter; apologies if this causes any confusion!
> 
> Readers, I know I write this every time, but I’m writing it again because it has to be said every time: I couldn’t have made it this far without you. Thank you for your support, you kind readership. Thank you for sharing in this fandom with me. I’m so happy to get to participate in it. I’m so glad you enjoyed this wild collection of h/c. You have yourselves a wonderful, wonderful time! Please, enjoy!

* * *

 

…It’s Not Over

 

            Foggy wakes to his cell phone clattering on the nightstand.  He buries himself into pillows, the ones wrapped in thousand-plus thread count cases, and a plush duvet that cost more than rent on his previous apartment.  He is lying in the collective earnings of Nelson and Murdock, and it feels magnificent.  He is not leaving the safety of creature comforts for a late-night phone call.  The last time he answered past midnight, Foggy had to mediate a pointless argument between Jessica Jones and Jeri Hogarth because, “You understand her type, Franklin,” to which he had to admit that he did speak fluent selfish-dick-vigilante. 

            Thanks, Matt. 

            He is not going to make that mistake again, so he lets the phone ring.  Jeri can clean up after Jessica Jones by herself for once.  “Let me sleep!” Foggy slides deeper under the covers.  As if in response, his phone stops vibrating, and his voicemail does the rest of the work.

            The silence is such that Foggy drifts off, but he’s woken a few seconds later by his phone.  He finally springs out of the blankets and nabs it.  Not Jeri: Unknown Number.  Foggy switches his phone to silent and shoves it in the drawer of his nightstand. 

            Under the covers again, surrounded by blankness and the heavy sound of his own breathing, Foggy resists the urge to reach for his phone again.  He goes numb all over; he shuffles the covers into a more secure cocoon.  Breathing ought to warm him up, but it doesn’t.  Friction doesn’t help either.  He tosses, he turns – he is _not_ picking up the phone.  He is not picking up the damn phone.  He is rolling as far away from the nightstand and wrapping himself up so tightly in his Egyptian cotton sheets that he can’t escape if he tries.

            Not that Foggy’s going to try, because he is not picking up the phone. 

            “We agreed.  We agreed!” his pillow is unsympathetic and uncomfortable.  Foggy uncovers himself and sulks, not picking up the phone.  They agreed not to be friends anymore, and Foggy has kept up his end of the deal by not calling or texting or thinking about his ex-best friend.  Matt has clearly been doing the same until tonight.  Until he needs something.  Always until he needs something.  That’s when he wants friends again.

            “It’s probably nothing.  It’s probably nothing.  He’s probably…he’s probably calling for directions…” Foggy mutters, trying to convince himself.  Because he is not picking up the phone.  He is not.  “Calling to rub it in, remind me that he doesn’t need anyone…”  That’s how it’s been, after all: after Punisher, when Matt tumbled down the rabbit hole, when being friends turned into being nothing at all, it’s been like they’d never known each other.  One minute, Matt is clinging to his hand against the cold pull of death, confessing to love the way only a dying man can; the next, he’s dismissing Foggy for his mask and his city, claiming it’s best they both walked away.

            So Matt’s definitely calling for some stupid reason.  From his burner phone.  In the middle of the night.

            Foggy picks up his damn phone.  Well, he swipes to connect, but he doesn’t say anything.  He doesn’t switch to speaker.  He sits with the line connected, with the faint, ragged sounds of, “Foggy…Foggy…” rising from his open palm.

            They are not friends.  Foggy Nelson doesn’t have a friend named Matt Murdock.  He never had a friend named Matt Murdock, only some unmasked version of a psycho vigilante who did a poor-ass job of pretending to be a human being.  Who is calling about nothing, speaking in a voice shredded from blood loss and pain and, Foggy.  Foggy, please.  Please.  I’m sorry, Foggy.  I’m sorry.

            I’m sorry.

            Foggy is not sorry.  About as not sorry as he is not picking up the phone.  His hands shake.  The words bubble in his throat; he holds them tightly in his teeth.  Hang up, he thinks, then lifts the phone to his ear and states flatly, “I’m hanging up now.”   
  
            “No, you’re not,” Matt huffs, but he’s not convinced.  Not totally. 

            Neither is Foggy, though he is pissed right the hell off, “I’m not your God damn medic, Matt!  I’m nothing to you!  You’re nothing to me!  Go to a hospital.  Have your precious city take care of you.”   
  
            “Fog-“  
  
            “No!” he feels the tear inside him, the snap of old wounds reopening.  Of Matt dismissing him.  After everything he’d done: the late night phone calls and DIY medical procedures and keeping a huge, life-threatening secret from the people he loves.  “You don’t get to throw me out of your life and then come crawling back when you need something!”

            “It’s bad, Foggy…”   
  
            “Good!  Good, I hope it’s bad!  I hope it’s awful!” Foggy throws the tears out of his eyes across the bed, but there’s too many.  He stops, lets them come.  His voice twists into a sob.  “It’s been great, you know?  Not having to worry about you?  Not having to treat every conversation like it’s the last time I’m going to talk to someone!”

            They don’t say it, but this is sounding like the last time Foggy’s going to talk to Matt.  For real.  Not like all those other times that come rushing back to him, gigantic reminders of why this friendship ended.  Why it had to end.  Why he shouldn’t have picked up the phone. 

            “Where are you?”

            “So you can send the cops?” Matt scoffs.  Spits.  Blood, probably.  “If I wanted them, I would have called them.”

            “I’ll see you in hell, Matt,” Foggy moves to hang up.  His finger stalls over the big red icon, the one that looks an awful lot like a bloodstain in the darkness of his room.  When he doesn’t hear any protesting from Matt, he hits it.

            The phone screen cuts to black.  He tosses it to the foot of the bed and leaves it.  The silence in the room is deafening.  Foggy breaks it with, “God damn you, Matt.”

            Sleep no longer an option, he tears himself out of his blankets and marches into the kitchen.  His new apartment catches the glow of Hell’s Kitchen through wide patio windows, and everything is awash with a faint gold hue.  The shadows of curtains and furniture are well-defined across the floor.  Foggy stubs his toe on the boxes he hasn’t dared unpack, the furniture he can’t bring himself to arrange.  He never felt crappy in his old bachelor pad; now he senses phantoms looming over his shoulder, ready to pull the new job and new apartment from Foggy’s hands with a laugh.  

            He drinks water straight from the tap because the cups are still in boxes.  That’s where the human-shaped silhouette on his balcony finds him before it collapses in a limp heap. 

            The words, “Call Claire,” flash in bright, neon letters through Foggy’s brain, a holdover from the bad old days, followed quickly by, “Actually, the Police?”  He’s disconcerted that the second plays like a question, like he isn’t sure even though it’s what any normal, sane person would do.  Unfortunately, Foggy isn’t normal or sane, not after everything.  The sutures, the mini mentals, the ice packs, the Aspirins; the maggots, the gunshot wounds, the head injuries, broken ribs, blood loss: they play through Foggy’s brain on repeat.  His response is trained, conditioned.  Go to the balcony, grab the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen by the armpits, and drag his sorry, bloodied ass into the apartment.

            Again, Foggy finds himself consumed by the thought, “The Police?”  He is a lawyer for a major firm on the fast-track to making partner, and there’s a bleeding, unconscious vigilante squirming on his apartment floor.  The bad old days are here again, but the consequences are so much worse. 

            “No…no hospitals,” the devil rasps.  “No police.  Please, Foggy.  Please.”

            “Climb back out onto the balcony then, because I am calling all the ambulances,” Foggy stalks into his bedroom.  He can hear Matt scrambling across his hardwood floor to escape, probably.  Cell phone in hand, though, Foggy dials the three digits he should have dialled way back when he found Matt dying for the first time.    

            He is about to hit Send, the scuffling still audible in the living room, when he notices the rumpled strap of his duffel snaking out of the closet.  The sack lies under a pile of old band tees and shopping bags of new clothing Marci insisted he buy, one more thing he didn’t unpack when he moved in.  Foggy can’t help but wander to it, tugging the strap until the duffel emerges.  Old blood leaves a dull gleam on the fabric.  The smell of antiseptic and alcohol is unmistakeable.  Foggy digs a hand inside and finds his Saving Matt Kit.  An errant strip of gauze appears in his grip.    

            The fabric hangs in his one hand as his cell phone waits in the other.  Foggy’s heart sinks into the floor.  This isn’t how it’s supposed to be.  He needs to call the police and get the last of Matt Murdock out of his life.  No more playing medic and buffer and whatever the hell else to a vigilante.  Foggy throws the guaze down and storms back into the living room, phone intoning his connecting call to the police.

            Matt stares at him through the darkness.  Matt.  Not the devil.  The devil stares up from the floor where his face has been discarded.  Matt remains, seated with his back to the closed balcony door.  Familiar in a disquieting way.  Foggy thinks it’s the blood smeared on his cheeks until he realizes there are tears on Matt’s face cutting through the red. 

            “Please, Foggy,” he begs.  “Please, Foggy…I’m…I’m sorry.  I’m so sorry.”

            “9-1-1 – what is your emergency?” the dispatcher says.

            Foggy releases the breath he’s been holding.  He is not telling them he has the wrong number.  He is not going to do that, because they aren’t friends.  They’re not even enemies.  They’re nobodies.  He is not going to hang up and run back to the room for his duffel bag.  He is not going to drag Matt to his new, plastic-wrapped sofa and patch the lad up. 

            He is not doing any of those things. 

            …except for the part where he totally is.  All of it.  Grabbing the duffel from his closet.  Depositing Matt on the sofa.  Grumbling the whole time under his breath, telling Matt to STFU when the lad won’t stop talking, stitching up the hook-shaped wounds roving the front and back of Matt’s shoulders.  “Take these,” Foggy shoves some Aspirin into Matt’s palm.  The lad swallows them dry.  Then it’s back to work with ice packs and a damp rag until Matt looks like a pale, ragdoll version of himself draped over the plastic. 

            Matt isn’t unconscious.  His eyes are closed, but the way he breathes takes effort, as if he forgets that he needs to inhale.  No better time than the present to ask.  Actually, the best time would have been when Matt was slumped against his balcony doors, but they’re way past that now.  “Why did you come here?” Foggy asks.  “What the hell are you doing, Matt?  I thought we weren’t friends anymore.”   
  
            There’s no response to the question that won’t destroy what little peace they’ve cultivated here.  That doesn’t stop Matt from trying to find one though.  He is quiet for several moments before admitting, “I wanted to see your new place.  It’s nice.  I mean, aside for the boxes.  And all the plastic.”  His lifts a sweat covered arm up off the sofa covering.  It snaps unstuck from his skin. 

            Foggy rises, packing up his duffel.  He has no use for their banter, not anymore.  “I want you gone as soon as you’re able,” he says, meaning it.  A look of hurt crosses Matt’s face from more than the knife wounds.  Foggy is glad to let it.  Well, not glad.  Vindicated is more like.  “I meant what I said, Matt: we don’t get to be friends again whenever you need something.”   
  
            “So why help me?” Matt asks.  “Why patch me up?  You could have called an ambulance, Foggy.  You could have…you could have handed me over to the cops.”   
  
            “Do you want me to?” go ahead, Matt: triple-dog dare me. 

            “No.  I just want to know why you’re not.  Is this for me or for the devil of Hell’s Kitchen?”   
  
            Foggy can’t believe they’re back to _this_ again.  He almost throws the duffel into Matt to wipe the oblivious expression off his face.  As it stands, he chucks the duffel into his unpacked boxes.  The box containing his glasses hits the ground and most of the contents audibly shatter.  It’s the perfect accompaniment for Foggy’s nerves. 

            “FOR YOU, MATT!  This has always ever been for you! God damn it…” he storms around the apartment, thankful that he sprung for the extra square footage now that he fumes.  “I have spelled this out for you, Matt.  I have literally done everything I humanly could to tell you, over and over and over again, that all this – all _this_ –“ he picks up the duffel again and shoves it in front of Matt’s dumb face so the lad can hear the smell of it or whatever the fuck his senses do, “ALL THIS is for you.  My friend.  My ex-friend.  And not because you were out saving the city, though who am I kidding?  That was certainly a perk until Frank Castle showed up.  NO: I did this because I hated seeing you hurt.  Because I hated getting those phone calls in the middle of the night and thinking it was the last time I was going to see you.  Because I love you, Matt Murdock.  I care about you.  Even if you don’t care – or only care – about yourself.”

            Foggy tosses the duffel aside again, this time to an area where he won’t damage more of his belongings.  He stares at the unzipped pockets, the strand of gauze retched out between the zippers, because he can’t bear to meet the sight of Matt on the couch.  Staring, sad Matt.  The one who looks like all he’s lost is finally catching up to him.  Thank goodness and good riddance, Foggy sighs.  He waves, “You can crash on the couch or hop back out through the window, but I want you gone before the sun comes up.” 

            He heads back to the bedroom, but not before Matt can chime in, “You going to unpack that duffel bag when I do?”

            “Take it with you when you go.  It’s yours anyways.”   
  
            “Why’d you keep it?”   
  
            Foggy shrugs, “Just in case.”   
  
            “…I got my ass kicked?”   
  
            That used to be the answer.  Now, the line doesn’t do.  Foggy’s lower lip twitches in anger and pain.  He makes it to the safety of his bedroom and fires back, “Just in case you wanted to be friends again.”

            He slams the bedroom door shut behind him and dives under the covers, not so Matt can’t hear him but so he can’t hear Matt.

            When he wakes up several hours later, Foggy charges into the living room.  Sunlight reveals no trace of the night’s excitement save for the toppled box of glasses.  The duffel sits abandoned by the couch.  The balcony door is shut.  Daredevil is gone. 

            Foggy feels something.  He wants to call it happiness: wants to, but can’t. 

* * *

 

            Work is a blur.  Foggy’s short excursion into Daredevil-world makes the everyday seem bland, banal.  Free bagels, comfortable chairs, and classy office drama befitting a Shonda Rhimes series fade into a blur.  He disengages from banter with Jeri, takes a long lunch by himself, dodges Marci’s insistence for a date that night, and gets back to his apartment as soon as he’s able. 

            Once there, he dismembers the duffel bag.  He arranges the contents into new quarters: pieces go to his first aid kit, others into the trash.  The movies take their place next to his new television.  For the first time in almost a year, Foggy doesn’t have a private life stashed in a bag, ready to don at a moment’s notice.  He’s Foggy Nelson, plain and simple Foggy Nelson, attorney at law. 

            He’s motivated, so he heads to the kitchen boxes after.  Weird, the glasses box he knocked over it on the counter now.  Foggy can’t remember moving it this morning, nor does he remember the outside looking so new.  No matter: he gives it a cursory shake to gauge the damage.  The tinkling of shards doesn’t meet his ears.  He slashes open the tape and checks inside. 

            The glasses are fine.  Beautiful, intact…hell, they look brand new.  Foggy inspects the box and finds their newness makes sense given that _they are brand new_.  The same fucking glasses he’s owned since law school replaced after he broke the bunch last night.

            Livid doesn’t begin to describe it.  First the phone call; now, Matt’s breaking into the apartment like they haven’t been staying out of each other’s lives.  Foggy grabs his cell phone and fires off a text: **If you ever break into my apartment again, I’m handing your ass over to the NYPD.**

            Matt responds quickly:  **Won’t happen again.  Promise.**

The message jabs at Foggy with such finality.  God, he can’t believe how many break-ups they’ve had.  They’re a Taylor Swift song.  With that in mind, Foggy is civil: **Thank you for the glasses.  You didn’t have to do that.**

**It’s the least I can do, Foggy**.  And then, after a slight pause, **Just in case**.

            Foggy thinks he knows where this is going, but he needs to read it to believe it.  **Just in case what?**

            Matt takes his sweet time with the response.  When it comes, Foggy stands for a long time looking at the balcony.  The sun is hanging low in the sky.  There’s no way anyone’s scaling the building to get to his floor.  Yet he can’t help but watch the city expectantly, as if the devil is going to come knocking again.

            Especially after rereading, for the zillionth time, Matt’s text:

            **Just in case you wanted to be friends again**.

            Foggy debates responding ‘yes’ or ‘no’ or with nothing at all.  He could let the message hang there in cyberspace so they spend the rest of their lives with a Schrodinger’s relationship.  That seems like the most appealing option of the three, honestly, though Foggy is fairly confident he should text no.  Matt isn’t going to get better; he can only get worse from here on out, crawl further into that devil of his until there’s nothing left of him. 

            But before he can hit the letters, Foggy hears his own voice in his head.  All the pep talks he gave to Matt when the nights were at their darkest, when the devil had crawled out of hell with some wicked new tale of the world’s propensity for evil.  He has to hope.  He has to try.  He has to believe that people can change, otherwise why do it?  Any of it?  Why patch up vigilantes or defend them in court?  Why crawl out from under the covers to answer phone calls in the middle of the night?  Love and trust might feel stupid sometimes, but Foggy has to admit they’re the best weapons he has against hate and fear. 

            “Should have kept my big mouth shut,” Foggy grumbles, typing.  He punches the three letters into the message and sends it off, followed by a, **Use the front door next time.** He hopes Matt understands that to mean Show Up Without Your God Damn Mask. 

            No sooner has he sent off the message than his buzzer sounds.  Foggy doesn’t bother with the intercom.  He hits the button and lets Matt into the building.      

 

* * *

 

Happy reading!

 


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